


how do you say darling

by motorghost



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Jesse McCree, Blow Jobs, Bounty Hunters, First Kiss, Flirting, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Idiots in Love, Kissing, Late Night Conversations, Long Distance Pining, M/M, Masturbation, Meet-Cute, Nostalgia, Paris (City), Pining, Public Blow Jobs, Robots, Romance, Secret Crush, Semi-Public Sex, Slow Dancing, Sort Of, Valentine's Day, Yearning, assholes in love, how they got together, implied genji/angela, implied threesome, post-Overwatch 2 trailer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:28:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motorghost/pseuds/motorghost
Summary: In the wake of Null Sector's attack on Paris, Jesse McCree picks up a new hobby and maybe a new friend. (or: "jesse shows up late, with coffee, then only "helps" off-camera." OR: "an american cowboy in paris")
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 102
Kudos: 407





	1. première partie

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was crafted for [mataglap](https://twitter.com/matawrites), who is a good good bean and (if you didn't already know) a fantastic writer in their own right!  
> Playing fast and loose with the canon, but not in any huge ways. A romantic story with lots of pining, longing, an angsty middle with a warm n fluffy ending. Just two grown men with difficult pasts trying to shuffle through something new and dangerous to their worn-out hearts.  
> Hope you enjoy! <3

1.

Jesse’s seen Paris maybe a dozen times in all his deployments and joyrides and black-ops infiltrations, but he’s never seen it like this. Most of the 16th arrondissement is ruined. Whole chunks of buildings jut from the Seine like black icebergs. Railings and gates twist up into the late-winter sky like dead branches. His spurs crunch over bits of cobblestone that probably hadn’t been disturbed for hundreds of years before the omnics shot it to pieces.

He recalls a cafe on this very boulevard, one that used to make these sweet little _galette des rois_ —king’s cakes— for epiphany. They had the sweetest little server who'd listened while Jesse told them all about the similar king cakes he’d sampled in New Orleans, how he’d almost choked on the small plastic Jesus and how it never did seem to bring him much luck. That cafe’s gone now; a hole in the ground beside other, similar holes.

New Overwatch’s base is some two hundred yards away, just outside the worst devastation. A corner building distinguished only by an ancient sign— _Serrurerie._ Jesse twists his brain over how to even begin pronouncing that while the rest of him automates for his former teammates, his mind elsewhere while his body juggles all they offer: their love, their worries, their hopes. It’s a while before he can really feel them at his side—Lena’s summery cologne, Reinhardt’s firm grasp. All the unspoken makes him feel like he’s staring from behind a veil, wobbly and distorted like a desert mirage. Unsure if what’s on the other side is real or just a conjuration of what his heart wants most.  
  
Still, he decides to settle in and make the best of things for as long as he can. That's all he told himself when he'd boarded the first train.

At least, by the time they’ve all finished clean-up and dealt with the UN, there's a new and controversial hire to draw everyone's attention.

Jesse stays polite while giving Hanzo the same wide berth as the rest of the team. That Winston would sign on a fratricidal ex-kingpin to be a part of the cleaner, shinier sequel to Overwatch is a brain-twister to be sure, but Jesse doesn’t spare it much thought; too much work for his hands. And when there isn’t work, there’s whiskey.

It’s not a bad thing, having habits. Even if they don’t make much sense to others, or don’t seem to serve any tangible necessity. Jesse knows he doesn’t have to wolf down his food like someone might use the opportunity to jump him, to the extent that Genji compares him to a starving coyote. It’s not necessary to pick up every book he finds and shove it into whatever part of his outfit can accommodate it, ruining the spine and the page corners. He doesn’t need to sleep with his back against a wall, in the room furthest away from everyone else, flipping through those books until he’s tired enough to lay his head down beside his gun. But it makes him comfortable, and no part of his current occupation offers any kind of comfort. Nothing has. Not for a long time now.

He just hopes they’re only habits, ones grown from a necessarily, prolonged solitude. He hopes it’s not because, deep down, he knows he’s meant to be alone. That coming back wasn’t so much a bad idea as it was a wrong one.

That crepe server took him on a date once. Asked in such a nice, French way that Jesse said yes with his hat in his hands and took off without say-so. Made a whole night of it, danced by the river and everything. Well worth all the hell he caught from Reyes in the morning. If he tries, he can still taste the wine they drank: pears and lemon drop. He can still remember how hard he worked to make that little server laugh. How good it felt when they did. 

That was the last time Jesse ever tried anything like a real date. Any romance he sees now is strictly limited to the four corners of a by-the-hour motel. Maybe a bar or public park if he’s feeling reckless. Now, even the idea of heading downstairs to eat dinner with the others feels just as ludicrous as a country waltz by the Seine.

Cold wind keeps rattling his ancient little window. The moon’s bright enough that he can see where the frame’s glass is thicker at the bottom, as though it had melted. 

One morning, when it’s still cold and rainy and lovely in that Paris kind of way, he wakes to pancake smell and finds out that Torbjörn and Brigitte have made _pannkakor_ over the little gas-powered stove in the kitchenette. He scarfs down more than his share, so much so that he anticipates another joke from Genji, but the guy’s too occupied with doting over Angela; he hands her jam, he pours her coffee. He's talking about old times while she listens, amused, her feet angled towards him under the table. Jesse narrows his eyes and glances over his shoulder, towards the hall, where Torbjörn is making gross noises to Brigitte's mother over the phone. That's when it hits him: it's Valentine's Day. 

All the butter-tinted _hygge_ makes Jesse feel justified in dipping quickly back into his room for a few shots and then adding several more to his steel flask before heading out without good-bye, just in time to avoid watching Genji cut hearts out of glossy magazines with his _tantō_. 

But mid-morning seems similarly caught up in the romance. The rain breaks up into puffy vanilla clouds with gold-touched edges, the sky beyond a deep periwinkle blue—blue like the hydrangeas that used to grow around the north gardens in Geneva. Soothing like home ought to be. 

It makes Jesse sigh, then chuckle at his own sighing; he used to love Valentine’s Day. Beyond the commercialism and the schmaltz, he had an open affection for the tenderness it brought out in people. All the measures to keep romance alive. In Santa Fe, each and every hotel lobby tended their own crackling fireplaces. The adobes looked even warmer somehow, smelling of spicy dinners and baked treats for sweethearts unknown. For the little time he did spend in school, Jesse loved the thrill of handing someone a candied heart from the packs donated to the classroom. He usually ran away directly after chucking it in his crush's lap, if his mama’s stories were true. Even Ashe had liked Valentine's Day; she could be real sweet when she wanted.

There were hearts and candies in Geneva, too. Cards magnetized in every break room from research to black ops. Top Overwatch agents, some of them with decades of combat experience and worldwide fame, tripping over themselves around their object of affection. Like Gabe’s annual panic over what to do for Jack, even though he came through with flying colors year after year. Gérard's lavish, week-long adorations for Amélie. Hell, Jesse’d even watched Genji grow enough to eventually ask Angela out to dinner. All of it—even his own unrequited yearnings—always brought a smile to his face.

But five or six years is a hell of a dry spell, especially for someone like Jesse. He knows he’s a loner at heart, but he’s always been surrounded by people: a gang, a squad. Found family in varying shades. Not always a lover, but usually. 

If there’s such a thing as an extroverted introvert, he’d say he qualifies. Naturally social but always distinct. Getting the actual bounty was just window dressing; he’s never been good at blending in unless he was trying. Even before he joined the gang, everyone knew he wasn't liable to remain in Santa Fe, but no one could ever suggest where he was liable to wind up.

The day stings in a way that makes him ashamed, like feeling jealous over a friend’s good fortune. He wishes he could be a hopeful man. Others have had it worse. Way worse—the devastated streets are empty at a time when Paris should be in a state of mass reverie.

Why should he lament a day that isn't so different from the countless days he's spent since it all blew up? What right does he have to be blue?

Mid-afternoon, Jesse stumbles upon an excellent distraction: a hold-up at the last working bank in town. Local bad boys trying to take advantage of the chaos to pad what must be desperately empty pockets. They’ve got semi-automatics drawn on local law enforcement and two hostages, but with a little help from a skylight window, a few flash grenades, and some shots aimed to wound, Jesse manages to unravel an hour-long stand-off in just five minutes.

He feels guilty in herding those desperate boys to the authorities, less guilty when the stressed and grateful _gendarmerie_ reward him with not one but two bottles of high-quality red wine. He’s lucky they were the same group that was there the day Winston and the others stopped the Null push; they must know exactly who he is.

No longer in need of a walk after the exertion and eager to hide out in case someone changes their mind about his bounty, Jesse takes his bottles to a seedy little district from way back when. He remembers these narrow streets half-lit by old-fashioned lamps and heavy red curtains, touched with herbal liquors and marijuana, all of it cultivated to give visitors and locals a taste of ancient Paris, a break from the crowded stores and wide boulevards. The gnarled cobblestone paths escaped the devastation, but what doesn’t look outright abandoned has still been shuttered. Not one single place is open. Jesse's boots echo loud and lonely down each winding alley until he starts to feel like he's on a movie set.

By the time dusk has reached its zenith, he comes across a cafe with only a simple metal lock. He breaks in clean, puts some money on the counter and opens his wine with one of their corkscrews. One of their beveled water glasses lets him toast to the district’s potential future and his own sorry heart, but he only gets in about five minutes of daydreaming before he notices a huge armoire against the back wall.

It's grossly out of place for its height and breadth. He stares at it for another minute before he gets up and gives the thing a push.

A little surge of glee rises through his chest and he pats himself on the back for still having good instincts; the big case slides to the right, opening the way to a cramped hallway. Glee turns to anticipation as he follows it down, dragging his metal fingers along the brick wall, striking his Elvis zippo when it gets too dark to see. A solitary door waits at the other end. He presses his ear and listens for a moment, then creaks it open to reveal an old speakeasy-style lounge. He’d seen the tinted windows from the alley, assumed it was some kind of backroom for gambling or other criminal dealings, but this is a full bar: atmospheric and old-world cool with art nouveau details and a full wooden stage.

And not an empty stage: there’s a dormant robot standing in front of an old-fashioned microphone stand. She’s way older than Jesse—an early version of the omnics that currently croon at the still-popular cafes uptown. Her short _gamine_ hair is black steel against her only somewhat humanoid face, offset by a curvy body in a short steel dress. Jesse isn’t a history buff by any means, but he’d put her style somewhere around the 1960’s and her construction somewhere around the 2040’s. 

The lounge has obviously been closed for a lot longer than the front cafe; the table he chooses, center-front, is covered in dust. A corner of his serape wipes the table and a chair clean enough for his uses, and, feeling the familiar sensation of being too big for the furniture, puts his boots up on another chair. The red wine sparkles full and deep on his tongue; good enough to savor. All the more delightful for the surprising, fancy environs.

His eyes go soft on the robot singer, then focus beyond, at nothing. What would these walls say? How many couples have spent their Valentine's Day in this very lounge? What songs would he request of the _chanteuse_ , if she were functioning? 

The reverie is just deep enough to distract him from the fall of footsteps until they're well down the hidden brick corridor. Jesse curses himself for not fitting the armoire back into place, slides silently up from his chair and draws his gun.

Then Hanzo Shimada appears, and he lowers it with raised brows.

“Goddamn, Shimada-san. You gotta learn to be louder.”

Hanzo only scoffs and continues what looks to be his own personal tour, eyes sweeping everywhere but at Jesse. “Perhaps you could give me lessons.”

“What’re you doin’ way out here?”

“I have never been to this part of Paris.” Hanzo pushes a gloved hand swiftly across the top of an old servers’ station, casting up dust that he brushes away with the other hand. “I have little to do but explore nowadays,” he adds with a grumble, as if that is partially Jesse’s fault.

“Hey, that's not my call. I ain’t quite as much of an O-dub regular as you might think." Jesse slips back into his chair, puts back up his feet. "Genji n’ I were Blackwatch first and foremost, and even Genji eventually got to be more on the true-blue roster. I never took off the black.”

“Is that so.”

Jesse narrows his eyes. Hanzo has never been rude to Jesse, apart from the arrogant ribbing Jesse knows is par for the course from an ex-gangster and a martial arts prodigy. The man’s definitely been humbled in every way that he deserves since his glory days as criminal overlord. And Jesse’s instincts tell him that Hanzo’s not the type to turncoat, even considering his history, and he’s been a good boy regarding anything Genji has asked of him since his arrival.

Not to mention Jesse’s seen him sneaking away from the other agents with a bottle in his hand at least as many times as Jesse himself. It puts him in a nebulous category of trust, if a more certain category of asshole.

Jesse pushes out a seat at his table with his boot; time passed with an asshole is still more fun than time passed alone.

“Want a drink? This is some trey-jo-lee pee-no no-arr.”

Hanzo wrinkles his lip, but after a moment in which Jesse is sure the man's about to march right back outside, he plucks a proper wine glass from the sidebar and pulls the chair to its furthest possible distance across from Jesse.

Ever the gentleman, Jesse fills his guest’s glass. “Y’know, I think I might’ve heard about this cafe once, when I was young and runnin’ guns. My Deadlock partner, Ashe—she’d been to Paris a hundred times. Was kind of a traditional spring trip for her and her kin. She talked on and on about how great it was. All the best bars and restaurants. She mentioned a backdoor lounge with a classic robot singer named Chéri.”

“Darling.”

Jesse looks at Hanzo. He wastes not a beat: “yes?”

Hanzo narrows his eyes. “Chéri means darling. It is not a real name.”

Now that he’s started, Jesse smirks and shifts in his seat, getting as comfortable as can be. “Well, now. Didn’t know you spoke French, Shimada-san.”

“Better than you.”

“Oh really? You sure you wanna bat-trey ah-veck mwah?”

Hanzo chuckles, then rasps, _“Vous ne me donneriez pas beaucoup de difficultés,”_ with just enough throaty emphasis and succinct Japanese inflection to make every hair on Jesse’s body stand on end.

“That ain’t bad. But I learned French a little bit closer to home. You ever get on down’a New Orleans?” he caws, tugging his accent into that swampy drawl, “Have you a good oh’l fête, cher?”

Hanzo sweeps his eyes over Jesse, obviously judging the quality of his accent, but also, in smaller measure, assessing him in less judgmental terms. Jesse sweeps his eyes right back, but quickly becomes preoccupied by superficial details. Like how well the man fills out his _gi_. The curves of his neck alone could inspire many a sappy country song. He’s got lovely eyes, too: bold and black and permanently angry-looking, like his brother, only cooler and more imperious. Hanzo exudes an aura of ruthless danger underneath the taciturn control of a sniper, with wildly distracting cleavage to boot.

Jesse guides his eyes elsewhere, but with the way Hanzo'd been looking right back, he feels certain his ogling was noticed; he feels a little guilty for thinking it, but Hanzo is exactly the sort of red flag for which he usually goes.

"You get a lot of French business back in the day?”

Hanzo’s smirk loses some ground. He turns to gaze instead to the still singer. “When necessary. I enjoyed the language in my youth.”

“Got a real romance to it.”

 _“Tch._ It is disciplined. French is the same everywhere.”

“Pickin’ up all the different dialects of Spanish too tough for you?”

“I had limited hours of the day.”

 _“Ay, pobrecito,”_ Jesse drawls, knowing full well he only knows a few Spanish phrases that his tongue doesn't immediately mangle beyond recognition. “What other languages you got?”

Hanzo, surprisingly, indulges him. He speaks Mandarin even better than he does English and recites a poem in Cantonese, his mouth forming the words as perfectly as if he’d studied for a competition. He speaks Korean, too, though he’s out of practice. His voice gets even rougher when he speaks Japanese, teasing Jesse with what Jesse can tell are city-boy, slang-heavy insults. Jesse teases right back, spurred on by the pointed attention Hanzo gives him when he sings a few lines of an old Spanish love song. Maybe Jesse is Hanzo's own kind of red flag. 

As soon as they finish the first bottle, Hanzo rises (unasked) to fetch the corkscrew and open the second. But he has some trouble; red wax and bits of cork dot the table as his frown grows increasingly murderous.

Jesse smirks from behind his resting hand, cigar smoke trailing up slow as molasses. “Need any help?”

“No.” Hanzo twists down the corkscrew for the fifth time, brow set as if he were . “The cork is ill-made.”

“Pretty sure it’s the same as the other one.”

“It is cheap— _kuso."_ His hand stops as the cork slides further down the neck of the bottle, perilously close to the wine.

“May I?”

Hanzo hands over the bottle, not looking at Jesse and muttering in Japanese. Jesse stands, takes off his serape, and wraps the end around the bottle’s base. He can feel Hanzo’s eyes on him as he knocks the base against the edge of the table, carefully, solidly, until the cork pokes out just enough for Jesse to tug it free.

A huff is all the thanks he gets as he fills Hanzo’s glass. “Where did you learn that?”

“Ain’t my first time gettin’ rewarded for local service with booze.” Jesse sits back down with a grunt. “Nor is it my first time havin’ to uncork a bottle with no tools around.”

“Is that so.”

Jesse smirks at Hanzo, considers telling him more, but then reconsiders. He wants to try something. “Bet you got all kinds’a similarly handy tricks up your sleeve, with all that _shinobi_ trainin’.”

“They are not tricks.”

“Any you won’t be damned eternally for tellin’ me about?”

“No.”

“Aw, c’mon. Your ancestors won’t care if I know how they used to… I dunno, use dog skins to sneak around towns at night.”

Hanzo whips his glare at Jesse. “Genji told you that?”

“Who else?”

Hanzo snorts. The sip he takes is more like a gulp. “He is full of shit.”

“It’s not true, then?”

Not only does Hanzo explicate just exactly how wrong Genji was, but he delves into truer, more fascinating ancient _shinobi_ practices. Most of them are things Jesse’s either witnessed directly from Genji or knew through other sources, but the way Hanzo talks about them is interesting by itself. The man’s obviously not just a boy who was forced into practice; he is passionate, even though it’s hidden under what Jesse would call eastern decorum. He also speaks with surprising warmth about the origin of his family: self-sufficient villagers who learned from disgraced samurai how to defend their lands from bandits. The warmth fades as he goes on, illuminating how the centuries shaped the Shimada family into the greatest yakuza empire of all time.

“No longer,” Hanzo finishes. He is still looking at the singer.

Jesse puffs his cigar in silence. They both seem to sense the growing tautness between them, as if they were suddenly ambushed; surrounded by the malevolent past.

“You have a gift,” Hanzo finally mutters.

“How’s that?”

“I have never told anyone outside the clan of our family’s origins.”

“Just makin’ conversation.”

_“Hn.”_

“Y’aren’t used to talkin’ to strangers. I get it.”

“I do not share the American preoccupation with ‘chit-chat,’ no.”

“Chit-chat usually refers to talkin’ about the weather or gossipin’ about coworkers. I was gettin’ to know you.”

“Why?”

Jesse resists the temptation to shrug and look away when Hanzo turns those serious eyes on him. It’s been a long time since someone inspired him to drop the joker act, if only for a moment.

Luckily, the truth isn’t far from what a joker might say. “Nothing better to do.”

He waits until Hanzo looks away to take a drink, then adds, “And you’re real handsome,” just to see how the man reacts. 

Disappointingly, he doesn’t. Hanzo just purses his lips and makes another one of those noncommittal throat noises he seems to like so much, which gets Jesse to wondering if his radar is off. Or maybe the guy’s just heard it too many times before.

Then Hanzo gestures his glass towards the stage. “Do you think your collection of eccentric skills includes the means to re-start the _chanteuse?”_

Jesse does his damnedest. The poor girl is damaged in ways that indicate she hasn’t been treated too kindly these past few decades: splashes of rust where drinks spilled, joints gone too long without replacement, wires all scorched. They manage to figure out her power source and find out that she might still run if properly charged, but there’s no way it wouldn’t short her outdated circuits.

“Too bad,” Jesse sighs, scratching his beard.

Hanzo steps down from the stage. “Perhaps it is for the best.”

Jesse notices too-late that the man has finished his wine and is on his way out the door. Cigar dangling, he stupidly calls back, “Huh?”

Hanzo doesn’t even pause. “There is such a thing as too much nostalgia, cowboy.”

2\. 

A couple days later, Jesse gets antsy, tired of helping Genji with scouting. He pawns him off on Angela— the easiest con he’s ever pulled—and finds Lena by the river. She’s supposed to be working on the Orca’s conductors, but Jesse catches her sighing over photos of Emily in the cockpit.

“Got any extra tools on ya, girlie?”

“What kind of tools?”

“Soldering iron, wire cutters, needle-nose, wire stripper…”

“What’s this? Got an old toaster with the sniffles?”

Jesse chuckles. Plays bashful. “Something like that.”

Lena is too preoccupied to pry; she gets Jesse what he needs and he carries it all in his satchel back to the speakeasy.

The work feels good. It’s nice to be able to do something with his hands after nothing but computers and recon for weeks (not counting the one attempted bank robbery.) Though Jesse spends most of the first day reading on his phone just to avoid screwing up Chéri permanently, by day two, he’s made genuine progress. She turns out to be much hardier than he first anticipated: her limbs move with purpose, her short skirt and single motorized leg respond well to their tune-up. She’s got details once-obscured by grit and grime that Jesse never would’ve guessed at. After some spit-polish and scrubbing, he realizes that her hair isn’t really a _gamine’s_ short crop; it’s more like lacquered waves.

“Josephine Baker.”

Hanzo appears on the third day. This time, he’s holding his own satchel.

Jesse rolls to his side, having been poking under Chéri’s skirt while splayed out on his back, almost hitting his head on her hard train. “Wh—hey there.”

“She is modeled after Josephine Baker,” Hanzo continues, placing his bag on their table from before. “A quite fascinating singer and spy from the 20th century.” 

“She was a spy?”

“Of a sort.”

Hanzo starts arranging the contents of his satchel in a neat line across the table and each item makes Jesse’s heart jump faster: a crisp-looking baguette, a small jar of honey, a small jar of dark jam, a tin of what must be butter, a wheel of cheese, three elegant little knives, and two more bottles of red.

“Holy shit,” Jesse stands, dusting off his shirt before he realizes that his hands are both gloved and touched with grease. He feels his cheeks heat; the gesture is so unexpected, and so unlike anything else anyone has ever done for him that he feels a little speechless.

Quickly, he tells himself he shouldn’t be so touched. Hanzo likes fine things; he probably eats a lunch like this every day, and only included Jesse as polite thanks for continuing with this weird pet project. _It's just been too long for you, cowboy._

“If I’d known we were having a picnic, I’d have worn my gingham.”

“I do not know what a gingham is,” Hanzo grunts, sitting down, “But you should fetch us glasses.”

"Yes, sir."

The gloves sit atop one another as Hanzo and Jesse dig into the spread and Hanzo illuminates the woman called Josephine Baker. He’s apparently made a pet study of spies and assassins from years gone by. The conversation hops from espionage to guns to gun running to—inexplicably—horses and horse-raising. Jesse moves the subject around as he likes; Hanzo keeps up but never initiates. He doesn’t give anything unless Jesse asks for it, which aggravates Jesse, to his own surprise. He wants to know what Hanzo wants, other than to eat and drink in an abandoned bar with a scruffy old gunslinger and a broken-down _chanteuse_.

Sometimes the direct approach works best—especially when you’re tipsy. “So what’re you really doing here, Shimada-san?”

Jesse watches Hanzo pick himself up a bit higher. “What do you mean?”

“You figure you got some debt to pay off, working with Overwatch?”

Hanzo narrows his eyes, apparently warning Jesse that he is about to over-step. “Obviously.”

Jesse pauses, adjusts his tone. “Just seems like you and Genji seem to be spending more time apart than together… though, I guess he’s got more to do nowadays.”

Hanzo huffs. “You should be wary of where you stick your nose, McCree.”

“Hard not to stick it, all of us kippin' under one roof and whatnot.”

“We are not like you. We cannot simply ‘chit-chat’ our way out of…” Hanzo throws up a hand, unable to even verbalize all that lies between him and his brother. “I do not know where our joint path leads. I can only walk my own as it unfolds before me."

Jesse leans back in his chair, feeling a kind of airiness spread out in his chest. He feels open in a way he can’t explain, and maybe a little ashamed at making this reserved man explain himself without even warming him up. His eyes plot the heavy shadows on Hanzo’s face, then politely divert before they have a chance to ogle the man’s cleavage again. “Seems wise.”

Hanzo looks him over as if to assure himself that Jesse is indeed chastened. Then: “and you?”

“And me what?”

“What are you doing here, cowboy?”

Jesse slides his thumb against the rim of his glass; fair’s fair. “Don’t rightly know, tell you the truth. Or, if I do know, it’s not something I can say just yet. Not proper. Not without a whole lotta context you don’t wanna hear.”

Hanzo picks up their last bottle to top Jesse off. “I have nothing better to do.”

Jesse comes back the next day. And the day after that. Soon he’s got a regular deal with Genji to skip their afternoon patrols so he can head down after high noon and post up in the lounge until nightfall.

Sometimes Hanzo comes, sometimes he doesn’t. He doesn’t always bring food, but he always brings wine. Sometimes he stays for a few minutes, brusquely interrogating Jesse on his progress; sometimes he stays for hours and the conversation flows. He lets Jesse talk him into card games, most of which he handily loses; he accuses Jesse of cheating but can’t figure out how. Jesse repays all his winnings by splurging on pastries, which he leaves waiting on their table like a trap for a wild animal. The first time he does it, he comes back from a two-minute bathroom break to see Hanzo sitting there, asking about Chéri’s joints with three less _tartelettes_ in the box than were there before. Jesse makes it a point to buy the strawberry ones from then on.

The man's not as stiff as Jesse'd expected. He’s reserved, to be sure; Hanzo talks of his past in careful sections only, imbued with significance from their special privilege of being spoken aloud. Conversation wanders from intrigue to bragging until Jesse admits how sad he was when he moved out of the desert for the first time in his life, to cold-as-fuck Switzerland no less, and Hanzo seems to ease out of his posturing. No point in flexing. Both of them have been brought high and laid low, down and up and back again. Leveled by so many trips within and without.

They gravitate towards points of similarity: fighting, warm liquors, nature and roughing it outdoors. Baseball and a mutual dislike of school. Movies—particularly ones about crime, cowboys or all of the above. A wholly unexpected joint interest in ancient American music from the 1940’s through 70’s; together they make a list of songs they hope Chéri will be able to sing if they ever get her to work. Jesse writes them all down on a piece of paper he leaves on their table.

They exchange experiences and conclusions around bounty hunting and related work. Hanzo is remarkably quiet about the fact that he kills most of his targets, which makes Jesse feel a bit better for some reason. But he doesn’t seem especially regretful, either. 

Jesse dolls out more compliments, always delivered or quickly followed by a grin he hopes isn't too crooked. Hanzo hardly reacts every time, which is as maddening for Jesse as it is enticing.

And Hanzo tolerates the gunslinger’s bad jokes; he easily drops his own, which are sometimes quite dirty and always when Jesse least expects them. Often he is shocked into the kind of barking laughter he fears will draw attention. Or that he’ll blush enough to show his hand too soon.

They always leave with no good-byes and no promises as to when it'll happen again. They sleep on opposite sides of Overwatch’s floor and Jesse never sees Hanzo in the morning. He never knows which of Hanzo’s visits to the bar will be his last. Jesse is used to treating each moment as though it’ll never be seen again, but, after a few weeks, he finds himself taking pictures of Chéri with his phone, explaining it away as a reference photo. He snags one of Hanzo, too, while the man is sitting on the stage’s edge.

A couple weeks in, Jesse does run into Hanzo in the apartment. Jesse just shuffles on in, yawning and adjusting the weak elastic of his boxers and probably looking a mess, and stops short when he sees Hanzo, as if the man had been holding a gun. But Hanzo is equally messy, his usually neat albeit choppy hair spilled freely about his bare shoulders. His immediate awkwardness inspires a kindness in Jesse he didn’t know he possessed; he finds Lena’s tin of cookies and offers them to Hanzo, promising himself to refill her supply later. 

Hanzo accepts, makes enough tea for two and they sit diagonal at a table usually meant for the whole team. Through the window, a guitar player is singing a song Jesse loves. When Hanzo scoffs, he mounts a defense, tells him how it makes him think of the last days he spent with Overwatch, all the things he should’ve said to the people he lost before he lost them. _How I wish you were here._ A song that wonders about the different paths chosen and whether or not they ended in good places, or if it was all just a waste of time. 

Hanzo listens with his eyes on the floor. He doesn’t say much, which Jesse doesn’t mind. He doesn’t know what came over himself. He can’t remember the last time he tried to explain such a maybe-unexplainable thing to someone else, but no hollow wave of regret follows the quiet, generous nod of Hanzo's weary head.

Then Hanzo confesses to trouble sleeping and Jesse hands over some of the pills that have helped him. They share a cigar, then Hanzo shuffles back to bed. Jesse traces the pale scars on the archer's bare back until Hanzo disappears around the corner, then returns to his own bunk to chase that image with an eager fist until he's chased out all he can.

3\. 

Spring hits fast and overwhelming. Trees that seemed barren the night before are full in the morning: soft pink, white, and violet. The vines that crawl up Overwatch’s little building sprout soft green leaves. The air blows sweet and kind through the open windows and Jesse wears his blue gingham button-up, shows it to Hanzo at breakfast with a flashy grin.

Genji remarks that he looks like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Jesse replies that, if he is, Genji is most certainly the scarecrow. Genji argues, claiming that Lena is far more scarecrow than he, which turns into a room vote that concludes: Genji is the scarecrow, Reinhardt is the (not)cowardly lion, Lena is Toto and Hanzo is the tin man. When told that the tin man has no heart, Hanzo looks miffed, but Jesse quickly informs him that, at the end, the tin man finds out that he had a heart all along.

Hanzo’s lips curl into the first real smile Jesse has ever seen on that face, though it disappears just as quick. “Perhaps Chéri will fare the same.”

Jesse grins down into his coffee. “Maybe.”

He can feel the others giving him and Hanzo odd looks, but Jesse relishes the sensation of sharing a secret, especially with someone like Hanzo. The man has made some improvements _vis-à-vis_ group relations over the past month, but not so much that his companionship doesn’t taste like a rare treat.

That Hanzo quickly follows up with a joke about his own lack of heart—something about how his other organs compensate—is just the cherry on top. Only Jesse laughs at first, but the others catch on once the shock has worn off, except for Genji, who can't take his face out of his hands.

It’s enough that Jesse, feeling butterflies for the first time in maybe a decade, makes himself invite Hanzo on a scouting mission to the north end of the city. The archer immediately stalks away, leaving the cowboy alone in the hall, but then returns with his bow and quiver, staring expectantly. Jesse coughs, mumbles, then lets Hanzo lead the way while he tries to fish his heart back up from his stomach.

They cross the river and wander past the tower, the Louvre, all the way up to Montmarte. They meet only a few Null sector omnics on the way: most of them disconnected from Null’s network, lost but still dangerous. Wandering through the night club district, Jesse recounts some unwise exploits from his younger days, which Hanzo matches in quality if not quantity; apparently the man claimed his own share of debauchery, sharing stories that not even Genji knows about.

It does nothing to quell the fluttering in Jesse’s chest, nor the persistent pull of the man’s still wide-open cleavage. In the height of what Jesse writes off as spring fever (and maybe a testosterone issue), he suggests they take advantage of the empty streets and leave a mark; something for the returning denizens to puzzle over. He finds a tree and scrawls his full, real name into it, joking that no one will really believe it was him. Hanzo finds it funny enough to add his own name in jagged kanji just beneath.

But all the wandering and his own antsy, empty hands eventually make Jesse want to get back to Chéri. He says as much and Hanzo agrees. It’s a quieter walk back, for which Jesse blames his impulse to pluck a large yellow flower by the base of its stem and offer it to Hanzo. Heart in his throat, Jesse watches as Hanzo takes it with quiet thanks, smells it appreciatively and then tucks it into his quiver. The cowboy spends the rest of the walk looking at the flower bouncing alongside Hanzo’s arrows, its conical face seeming to mock him with a cartoonish voice: _what do you think you're doing, you hopeless fool?_

He has no idea. He isn’t even sure that he _truly_ likes Hanzo: who he is, what he’s done. What started as a fun way to waste the time now feels—as suddenly as the spring flowers—like another lesson waiting to re-teach him what so many other, terrible lessons have already tried.

It doesn’t help that Hanzo still seems unreceptive. He accepts compliments and flowers as though they’re his due, albeit always politely. He smiles more now, but they never linger, always fading fast as if remembering that he shouldn’t. He does initiate more conversation now, but that could just be his way of matching Jesse’s style of relating, which is its own form of politeness.

There have been a couple moments, usually late at night, where Jesse thinks he can tell that Hanzo had been looking at him a second before, but the man’s too quick to know for sure. And it’s not like Jesse can do something clear and proper like buy Hanzo a drink or ask him to dinner; most places are still closed, and neither have the time to take any sojourns outside of the city. All they have are patrols and Chéri.

Jesse tries not to get too wrapped up in his own wild expectations. He nurses his feelings as he would visit a local shop: joyfully partaking in the sampled treats, fully aware that he can’t afford to take any of it home.

“McCree.”

The cowboy looks over to where Hanzo is gesturing over the bridge. A boat is coasting down the Seine; the first Jesse has seen since arriving. There aren’t many people lining the deck, but it’s a good sign that the city is springing back to life.

“Ha!” and McCree resumes his Cajun drawl, grinning at Hanzo, _“Laissez les bon temps rouler.”_

One night, Winston asks both Hanzo and Jesse to head up to the roof and keep watch. There were some signs that they were being watched, but nothing major enough that either man thinks it unwise to invite a bottle of wine to their lookout. They toast the night, a clearer vista than Jesse has ever seen in these parts; with the lack of people and the dust settled, the stars shine like they do from the highest peaks of the Sangre de Cristos. 

Hanzo starts talking first. He talks about the stars over Tài Shān, one of the five sacred mountains in China. How he’d scaled each and every one of them, hiking through dense forest and scaling impossible passes. He talks about the trees and boulders and rivers and how powerless he felt under the elements. They cared nothing for him, no matter how much he respected them. He looks at Jesse and tells him, in a low, soft tone, that Tài Shān represents spring and renewal, that he’d thought he could find peace by hiking the longest and most difficult path up its face—even creating his own path when directed by spirit. He thought he could forget his troubles, but they follow him even now. Even with his once-dead brother sleeping one story below.

A chill rolls unexpectedly from the north; winter’s death throes. Jesse sees Hanzo shiver, exhales a thick cloud of smoke, and then sweeps his red serape over the man’s blue shoulders.

Hanzo goes stiff, mutters, “Unnecessary.”

“You can shrug it off if you gotta shoot,” Jesse drawls, sitting back down.

A beat, then Hanzo clearly says, “Thank you,” and Jesse sees him rub the cloth between his fingers, as if trying to figure out what it’s made of.

4.

And then Jesse actually, finally, brings Chéri back to life.

It must be past midnight because both of their comms are pinging on their table: the team must be wondering where they are. But Hanzo and Jesse don't even notice the buzz; they're both rapt as Chéri leans back on her waist, raises her arms, and starts moving her solid fingers to some silent tune.

Hanzo grunts, “Wait.”

He follows her wiring to the back, where she is wirelessly connected to a holopad that houses her library of music. Jesse trots after, looking down over Hanzo's shoulder at the screen. It doesn’t respond when Hanzo taps it.

“It’s got a dock,” Jesse mutters.

He reaches past Hanzo to the wall unit, holding his finger against a button until the screen boots up. If he looks down, he can see straight into Hanzo’s robe, the crevice of his chest and the shadow of the dragon tattoo. The ruinous curve of his throat. A jumping pulse under soft skin.

His body goes still and vibrato at the same time, like he’s been hypnotized. When Hanzo turns to say something, their noses are an inch apart. It takes a gentle elbow from Hanzo to snap Jesse out of it, and when he does, he takes a step backwards that's more like a leap.

“An odd selection,” Hanzo mutters. Jesse hadn’t even noticed him pick a song.

But Chéri is singing. It’s an ancient American song; Jesse recognizes it from the list they chose weeks earlier. In the back of his mind, he notes with some astonishment that it has been a full month since then. Time has flown.

He follows Hanzo back to their table while nerves jump like popcorn inside his chest, filling him up until his throat closes. Chéri’s voice doesn’t help; Jesse listened to recordings of Josephine Baker after Hanzo’s discovery, but their robotic lady has a voice all her own. Warbling, bird-like; tinny for her age and speaker quality, but so emotive as to surpass all technological shortcomings. He can see why they kept her around for so long; she's got him fixing to do something stupid.

“Wonder if it’s the same singer for every song,” Jesse whispers, like he wants to be respectful to the performer. “It’s gotta be, right?”

“No small feat if so,” Hanzo whispers back. “The catalogue was enormous.”

“Wonder who she was.”

“I looked, but found nothing. There was little information about this bar. No doubt to maintain its aura of secrecy.”

Jesse looks at Hanzo and those nerves lick the inside of his mouth like a word he can't pronounce. He never would’ve expected this man to take an interest in something as left-field as an old robot singer in a forgotten speakeasy lounge, let alone tolerate Jesse’s company long enough to put her back together again. What’s holding them together now? What if, their strange project completed, he grows bored and moves on? Hanzo gives every impression of the predictable old master, but there’s a live wire tucked behind that stately _kimono_ ; thrashing like a cut cord, sparking and dangerous. He could start sparking and burn the whole place down.

But it sparks Jesse's own live wire something fierce. Something about Hanzo makes Jesse want to throw words at his feet without running away. Something about him makes Jesse want to bite down on his fear and drag it out into the sun.

“Wanna dance?”

Hanzo turns fast. He scoff-laughs, as if it’s another one of Jesse’s dumb jokes. When Jesse keeps staring, and Hanzo notices that he is still staring, that amusement gets replaced with something else. Something not disgust, at least.

Then Hanzo turns away, looking at the singer with the thinnest veil of resignation. “I cannot dance.”

Jesse chuckles, some of his old nerve rising to meet the challenge. “Pretty sure there’s nothin’ your body couldn’t do if you told it to, Shimada-san.”

“I have never danced,” Hanzo clarifies.

“It’s easier than it looks. I'll teach you.”

Hanzo looks at Jesse and Jesse keeps his gaze straight and true. He wants it so bad, but he’s not going to push Hanzo like he’s pushed him so many times before. This is something he wants Hanzo to decide on his own.

The sudden scraping of Hanzo’s chair lodges itself into Jesse's brain like all his other memories of explosions.

There’s just enough space near the front for maybe a half dozen couples, so they’ve got plenty of room. Jesse takes Hanzo’s hand in his metal palm and puts his gun hand on Hanzo’s hip, trying not to smile too much. They draw just close enough for Jesse to go briefly dizzy with Hanzo’s scent: resinous and woody, like the incense he loves to burn. Redolent of fresh pine and high mountain air. He looks at Jesse so intensely, Jesse thinks he might’ve been caught, but then they start swaying and attention falls to making sure they get it right.

The tune has waltz time, which is lucky, because Jesse doesn’t think his organs could handle anything slower. Just touching Hanzo has got his heart rate jumping, thoughts banging around inside his head like his own gears are broken: _Jesus, you are a fool, cowboy. Just the biggest fool._

“Y’gonna let me lead, partner?” Jesse laughs.

“If you would lead properly.”

“You said you'd never danced before!”

“I have seen it done. Waltzes. In Vienna.”

“This ain’t Vienna. Let me. We’ll go slower. Hanzo, damn it,” Jesse laughs.

He tugs with his metal hand enough to get Hanzo to follow, and then they take it halftime, a messy country waltz that Jesse learned in the saloons back home. When Jesse guides one way, Hanzo follows. The real country waltz is more walking than dancing, but without much room to roam, they stay close. The gunslinger feels mighty pleased with himself when he glances down and catches that look from Hanzo that might mean he’s impressed with Jesse. 

And the archer picks it up quickly enough, like Jesse knew he would. It emboldens Jesse to add another trick; he takes Hanzo’s hands in his own and lifts them up, moving to face Hanzo’s back just like they stood at the music library. Still holding hands, and after a moment of what must’ve been gargantuan adjustment from Hanzo, they waltz that way.

“You will certainly take a mile if given an inch,” Hanzo mutters, though Jesse can hear the amusement behind it.

“This is a part of the dance, darlin’. Can’t just march around in a little circle all the time.”

“I knew this was some kind of western iteration.”

“What gave it away?”

“Aside from your,” Hanzo pauses when Jesse lifts their hands again, prompting Hanzo to do a neat little spin before they’re back in each other’s arms again, “Preternatural familiarity?”

“Aw, shucks. You ain’t so bad yourself.”

“I am good at most things.”

“Except cards, I guess.”

Hanzo cuts with his eyes and Jesse thinks he’s finally over-stepped, but then Hanzo suddenly takes the lead, sweeps him back; he moves fast, but dips slow. Makes Jesse feel safe and secure as he bends the cowboy back.

But Jesse still feels his stomach jump up into his throat. His lips move without breath, sputtering.

Then Hanzo eases him back up, laughing. He gives Jesse back the lead, but Jesse can’t seem to pick it up; he’s transfixed by Hanzo’s smile. It’s wide, wrinkles his face in a whole new way. It shows off the sharp incisors he and Hanzo share. And it _lingers_.

The song ends and it’s still there. Chéri gives an adorable bow, though Jesse only registers it out of his peripheral vision. They keep dancing, slower and slower, but Jesse doesn't want to stop. Slowly, he draws Hanzo closer; hand on the small of his back, chin over his shoulder. And Hanzo goes along.

Chéri starts another song, this one incredibly slow. Almost painful. Wispy and pretty as her voice is, the music is dark and full of longing; almost too perfect for how Jesse feels. They sway to the doomed rhythm, a proper slow-dance now, a little off-beat but it doesn’t matter. Jesse’s in another world.

It’s choking, how easy it is. How easy all of it has been. He’s never felt a thicker knot in his throat.

The song is too amorous; it must be uncomfortable. But, despite that Jesse prepares for him to leave with each passing second, Hanzo remains. He's warm and solid in Jesse's arms like a fire he wants to keep all to himself, though he can barely stand the burn. It's all too much, and it’s all come so fast; now he wants to make it go even faster. He wants to see the spark rise up the fuse until something explodes. Wants to feel embers on his skin or nothing at all. He knows it’s going to end, but if it has to end, he wants to leave blast marks on the floor.

Suspended on a wire as tenuous as their _chanteuse’s_ voice box, they sway. The song passes, then another. And another. None of them are faster than an easy lope, and Jesse nurses true gratitude for the first time in years; the air feels thick as smoke and just as easily waved away. When he breathes in, he can feel Hanzo’s answering breath, just as soft and slight.

But when he wonders if Hanzo also doesn't want the dance to end, he calls himself a fool. 

Then Hanzo shifts and Jesse, fully prepared to ask him if he wants to stop, is instead arrested by a reflection of his own hypnotized state. Hanzo looks so good all the time; like this, with his eyes all lazy and his features relaxed, he looks even better. Unreal, even. Like someone Jesse conjured out of his own springtime imagination.

They look at each other with barely an inch between them and Jesse thinks he'll die from the tension. _It’s gotta be me_ , he realizes. He has to be the one to make a move. Hanzo isn’t gonna—

Then a hand tugs sharp on Jesse's neck and the kiss is soft enough to kill him. His body seems to jump and freeze at the same time. Air hums noisily from his nostrils and he touches the scruff on Hanzo’s jaw with his gun hand, smooths it up to his side-burns. He has to touch, or he won't be sure it's real.

They part, a soft kissing sound that shoots Jesse right in his softest place, and Hanzo reaches a hand up, too. His hold on Jesse's jaw is as sure as his gaze. Jesse’s too shocked to take any kind of lead this time, but Hanzo handles it better than he could ask for; he kisses Jesse again just as soft. So tender and restrained; such a gentleman. 

So restrained that Jesse thinks that Hanzo might still be doubting whether or not Jesse is on board.

Jesse pulls in with that hand on Hanzo's jaw and pushes with his tongue. The surprised grunt Hanzo releases pulses into Jesse like a too-quickly emptied syringe. 

When they part, Jesse sees Hanzo smile so true that he feels his own face split on what must be a really stupid grin. He strokes the backs of his fingers up Hanzo’s cheek, lets out a low curse almost at the same time as Hanzo, who curses in Japanese. They both let out brief, shocked chuckles, Jesse’s lingering as Hanzo strokes Jesse’s face and examines his eyes.

Then Hanzo smiles like the cat that got the canary. “I was wondering when you were going to do more than stare at my chest."

Jesse sputters, though he still drags his thumb across Hanzo’s lower lip, stroking his face like he can't believe he's real. “I been makin’ moves for weeks!”

“As have I.”

“What moves?”

“Bringing you food? Taking you on long walks?” Hanzo nuzzles his face into Jesse's palm, making him shiver. “Staring at you.”

Jesse laughs in disbelief. _“I_ took _you_ on those walks. And lookin’ and glancing away ain’t staring, darlin’!”

“I knew you were dense.”

 _“I'm_ den—I picked flowers for you!”

“A daffodil.”

“Daffodils?”

“You gave me a daffodil. Daffodils mean respect.”

Jesse cracks up, though Hanzo is dragging his teeth across Jesse’s pulse. “How was I—did you take a fuckin' course on the language of flowers, college boy?” 

Then Hanzo takes Jesse by the lapels and pushes him backwards until Jesse’s thighs hit the edge of the stage. The cowboy reels, his mind losing any footing it might’ve had left over from the kiss. Hanzo easily hoists his ass up onto the stage and then runs those hands up Jesse’s torso, unfastening his chest-plate.

“Darlin’,” Jesse snickers as Hanzo moves on to unbuttoning the top of his shirt, “In front of Chéri?”

Adorably, Hanzo actually glances to check on Chéri, who is sashaying through some bluesy number that does absolutely nothing to quell Jesse’s arousal.

Then Hanzo looks back at him with a smirk. “She is a worldly woman.” He noses against Jesse’s throat again, kissing down to his collarbone. “She has seen worse, I’m sure.”

“We gotta show her respect,” Jesse drawls, relishing the grunt that leaves Hanzo when Jesse crosses his legs around his waist. He sits up to press their chests together. “We met her on Valentine’s day. That’s auspicious.”

Hanzo eyes him then, playing with his own smirk. Tugging out Jesse's shirt where it was tucked into his jeans. “I did not know if you knew what day it was.”

“I didn’t think _you_ knew. Do they even celebrate it in Japan?”

“Somewhat.” Hanzo runs both of his hands up Jesse's back, underneath his shirt. “But it was not my tradition.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Jesse leans into Hanzo’s touch. “You inspire some real powerful admiration, darlin’.”

Hanzo’s ears go red; he scoffs. “And you are an incorrigible romantic.”

“Damn straight. Went to four different shops tryin’a get you those tarts you like so much.” Jesse slips his own hands under Hanzo’s kimono, drinks up the sigh he elicits. “Wanted to buy you a Valentine.”

Hanzo scoffs again. “I have never had a Valentine.” 

“Damn shame.” Jesse’s hands skate up to Hanzo’s ribs, to his back, embracing him fully. “Damn shame,” he whispers right before pressing his tongue into Hanzo’s waiting mouth.

They kiss like a fever. However he acted before, Hanzo shows no restraint now; Jesse has to hold him by the jaw just to get him to slow down, to accept something slower—more luxurious. They have time, Jesse says with his kiss. They can linger over one another like fine morsels. He feels the moment Hanzo gives in: the sigh that puffs out, the flow of tension from his body. How he seems to open up, let Jesse get even closer. He gasps when Jesse licks up the crease of his throat tendon and places a wet, open-mouth kiss in the hollow of his jaw.

Their misaligned hips nod towards one another; Jesse feels Hanzo’s hardness press against the very base of his groin and the resulting groan that shoots up from his belly makes him clamp down his teeth on the slope of Hanzo’s powerful throat.

“McCree,” Hanzo grunts.

Jesse loosens, licks contritely over the spot. “Call me Jesse.”

“Jesse.”

_"Hanzo.”_

“The comms.”

Jesse blinks a few times, then notices: the comms are buzzing again. If they haven’t given up by now, at this hour, it’s gotta be something serious. 

With a growl as severe as his reluctance, Jesse rises from the stage and pops the unit in his ear before accepting the call. Winston is fuming; someone broke in. He suspects Talon operatives trying to murder them all in their sleep. They’ve been looking for McCree and Hanzo for hours. Angela and Genji have combed half the city. They ship out within the hour.

Jesse looks at Hanzo only to see the man with his own earpiece in, listening to it all. They meet eyes and linger there. Suspended on a wire again. Winston’s voice breaks the cord and Jesse rumbles back, says they’re on their way. Doesn’t bother to come up with an excuse for why they didn’t answer. More important things to deal with now.

Together they head back to base but Jesse, explaining that it might make Hanzo look better if he arrives first and alone, decides to hang back. Hanzo doesn’t say anything, but takes off all the same, his golden sash billowing behind him like a handkerchief to a parting ship.

Hours later, they’re all sharing breakfast on the Orca: packaged foods and ship-coffee to go with an ugly dawn. Load-up is so fast, Jesse barely has time to register the smell of freshly-baked crepes on the wind; Paris is waking up just as they're leaving. Jesse hardly pays it any mind. _Just my luck._

Lena takes off as soon as the last bite is devoured and Jesse feels a sick rumbling in his stomach that ascends with the ship. It peaks when they hit optimum altitude and doesn't go away. Jesse lights a cigar and casts his gaze around the ship, searching for something solid to settle his churning guts. He looks at Reinhardt and Angela, seriously discussing upcoming strategies. He looks at Winston, worriedly pouring over Athena's holo-projections. He glances to his far right at Genji, who refuses to speak to him, and then at the empty seat between them, where Hanzo ought to be.

The archer was gone in the morning. Four hours of sleep and Jesse woke up to a tiny yellow note slipped beneath his door: a single word of apology and the kanji for 'Hanzo," as jagged as his carving in the tree.


	2. deuxième partie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jesse reconciles with Hanzo's departure and all that remains for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second part of mataglap's Valentine's Day-themed fic! Let's not think about how long ago February was!!!
> 
> Thank you to robo-cryptid for beta-ing TWO versions of this fic, the latter of which was ~13k words. So there'll be a final third chapter right after this one.
> 
> I've also made a short playlist to accompany the entire 'darling' story:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7jveKvDmfuxMLGj3OI3ARY?si=dRl7-wGSTi-oE2DKPB9OIQ

1.

The SOS arrives one hour later. Lena makes an emergency landing on the northern French coast before she tells the whole team: Null Sector has mounted a full assault on Rio de Janeiro. 

Winston simmers with rage as he paces up and down the black-stoned coast, guiding them all through the facts: the need is clear and present, but Talon will undoubtedly take advantage of Paris should they turn this brief regrouping into a full retreat. Talon knew that Null Sector would attack Rio, Winston is sure; he surmises that they pushed Overwatch out of Paris with their surprise raid just to send a message. 

Jesse nudges Genji, but in keeping with the mood he displayed all morning, Genji continues to ignore the gunslinger, even as they both volunteer to stay behind. They could thwart any Talon operations or at least make it seem like Overwatch is capable of occupying more than one space at a time. But the crisis in Rio is too great; too many lives are at stake as they stand there and talk. All hands on deck.

They all do their best to get some sleep during the ten-hour flight, but Jesse—even knowing he’ll have to be ready for battle as soon as they land—cannot get Hanzo out of his head. That little yellow note burns a hole through the shirt pocket under his armor, right over his heart. He doesn’t miss an opportunity to berate himself for still, even now, being so damn dramatic, but he was that afraid of losing it.

What the hell happened? What could he have said that would make Hanzo take off without so much as a fare-thee-well?

But as he replays the entire day in his head, scouring for anything that could have been misconstrued as insulting, a seed of hopelessness takes root. If Hanzo were offended by something that Jesse never could’ve predicted—the daffodils return, mocking him still—then he could spend the next hundred years re-examining their every interaction and never figure it out. The torture of falling for the most inscrutable man on the planet.

Jesse goes very still, then pulls his hat down over his eyes.

When will you ever goddamn learn?

An hour later, he gets out of his own seat and falls into the one next to Genji.

“Alright,” Jesse mutters, keeping his tone as low and civil as possible, “You don’t wanna talk to me, I get it. But don’t you think it’s weird, him just takin’ off like that? What if he’s in trouble, I mean.”

“I should be asking you,” Genji replies, arms folded tight. “You spent more time with him than I did.”

Jesse grinds his jaw. “I didn’t know.”

“You may not have thought it, but you certainly knew it. You’re not stupid enough to think that Hanzo was with me whenever he was not with you.” Then Genji tilts his visor toward Jesse in a way that makes the gunslinger brace for impact, ”Or perhaps you are that stupid.”

Jesse grinds his jaw. “I don’t stick my nose into other peoples’ business, Genj. You of all people—”

“I of all people should have warranted at least your passing consideration. You of all people should have said something to Hanzo about how he was choosing to spend his time.” Now Genji is looking squarely at him; Jesse can see his own warped reflection in that gleaming silver plate. “Or does your dedication to ‘justice’ not extend to your own actions?”

Jesse glares at the floor. A part of him still sees Genji in shades of red and black. How they used to snarl at each other; never quite friends, but as close as the trench can make fellow soldiers. At the end of the day, Jesse had pitied Genji, and Genji had sensed his pity, and they never did totally close the gap. Two champion fighting dogs never bred to get along and kept on too-short leashes. Ten years ago, things might’ve escalated.

Genji sighs and the sound somehow alerts Jesse that he himself is not breathing. When he takes in air, he feels that smoker’s rasp. What he’d give for a cigar right now.

Then Genji speaks calmly—truly calm, and not as though he were only schooling his temper to avoid a fight. “I am angry that I may have missed out on another chance to make things… better. But it was his choice to leave, not yours. You are not responsible for his actions.” Genji crosses his arms and takes another, softening breath. “Perhaps our paths are more winding than I’d hoped.” Then, as if to himself: “I can only be patient.”

Patience. Jesse chews the word like a taste he’s never managed to acquire. If he’d had any patience, he never would’ve let things go so fast. He wouldn’t have scared Hanzo off.

But then again… wasn’t it Hanzo’s eyes that closed first? His mouth that pressed to Jesse’s mouth? Was Hanzo scared off by his own feelings, or did that call back to base simply jostle him back to his senses?

If Jesse had misgivings about joining Overwatch before, he could parachute out the doors right now.

Instead, he tugs his hat down and crosses his arms, slumped and sullen. Analysis congeals into anger as a lack of answers leaves him with no other choice but to shift all the blame onto Hanzo.

Because Jesse is sure he didn’t do anything too wrong. Nothing that made him unworthy of the benefit of the doubt, that’s for damn sure. Especially with all the faith Jesse’d so foolishly given Hanzo.

He didn’t even try.

2.

Null Sector’s force is larger in Rio than it was in Paris, but they manage to land safely with the help of a young fighter that everyone recognizes—Lúcio Correia dos Santos, one of the world’s biggest musicians and certified child prodigy. Jesse has seen the best the world’s had to offer, the greatest and smartest and strongest of all measures, but there’s no denying the specialness of this twenty-six-year-old skater and his modified sonic weapon. Lúcio’s cleared most of his own neighborhood by the time Overwatch arrives and he takes them all to his home and nightclub without wasting a second. When he shakes Jesse’s hand, Jesse takes his hat off.

But then another wave swarms the place and they’re forced out through the back. Echo tracks the force’s central hub: a colossal mothership, hovering over the city like judgment day. It’s been so long since Jesse’s seen an omnic threat of this magnitude and it reminds him of just how foolish he’d been to ever think there’d be good times ahead. For any of them.

It’s a gunsmoke-filled slog all the way to the sky. Then the real struggle begins.

By the time the smoke has cleared, it’s the next day. They return to Lúcio’s harmed and harried. Reinhardt is critically injured; Jesse wants to chew him out for being the way that he always is. He sees the sentiment reflected in Angela, but she knows better how to transfer her feelings into work. Genji and Lena help Brigitte onto Lúcio’s kitchen table, her leg bleeding in spidery rivulets while Lucio begins his own doctoring. Echo tends to the broken ship outside while Winston swings through the jungle of the city to ensure that they’re not followed. He’ll be at it until dawn the next day.

That leaves Jesse to hold his hat in his shaking hands while he sits on the partially-risen stage in the middle of the ruined club. Minutes, hours are lost to the cacophony inside his head. He’s used to the pitch of war, the ringing that takes hours to go away; he hardly notices it anymore. But this time is worse and he’s not sure why.

The ringing and the not-knowing combine to make him feel older than he’s ever felt before. Then he’s awake and fighting again. At least his hands know not to shake when there’s work to be done.

3.

Three weeks pass like three days, time compressed by effort and adrenaline. They all live to see the city salvaged and make plans for rehabilitation and recon. Lúcio turns out to be even more impressive than first impressions suggested; he takes the lead on recovery seamlessly, guiding even Reinhardt without ever issuing an actual order. Jesse sees the making of a leader in him. He’s confident in his belief that a more apt successor to Jack Morrison couldn’t be found.

It’s why he doesn’t feel too guilty in announcing to the team that he’s moving on. He tells them over breakfast while Torbjörn is on the phone with his wife again and Lena and Genji are washing dishes and Brigitte is still at the table, looking up from her phone to fix him with her damn doe eyes.

He lays out the headline reason as clean as he can: Talon is still out there. Overwatch isn’t going to get anywhere by responding to only their most public of moves. They need to get at the center of the spider’s nest and no one is better equipped or more willing to do that then Jesse McCree. “Plus,” he adds, trying to look stoic over his coffee mug, “Overwatch’ll look a hell of a lot more attractive to the public without a multi-million-dollar head on their roster.”

A reason he keeps to himself is that, without another reluctant member around to distract him, it’s impossible to deny that he never should’ve come back at all.

Leaving feels eerily similar to arriving: thinking one thing, saying something different. They part just outside the club while the sun sets behind the palm trees. Echo’s sad eyes near break Jesse’s heart, but he gives her his best smile. Genji seems like he has a lot of words, but very few are actually exchanged. Reinhardt barely speaks, as does Brigitte. Though they’ve known each other only a short while, both Mei and Lúcio seem genuinely sad. Torbjörn, bizarrely, seems the most understanding; he wishes Jesse well and shakes his hand, as does Winston.

But the hardest hit is when Lena wraps her arms around him.

“Don’t forget,” she mutters so only he can hear, “You can always come back.”

Argument sits so heavily on his tongue that he can only nod, shoulder his pack, and wave in lieu of everything he can’t bring himself to say.

He spends the entire ship-ride back to the States feeling like the last man alive.

4.

The best thing about the road is that it never changes. Life looks the same in that nothing looks the same, but for Jesse, it feels more comfortable than anyplace else. Maybe it's because he spent most of his life in tactical suits, shot around from military base to dangerous locale back to some other military base, but the road feels like home more than Gibraltar, Geneva—any Watchpoint. Even more than Santa Fe.

And he’d be lying if he said it didn’t soothe all kinds of stings; after what he's been through, there's no sweeter salve than knowing he can do whatever he likes, whenever he likes. No one to tell him what to do or judge how he does it. As he drives north up the eastern Texan coast, he cranks the radio, sips the drink hidden in a brown paper bag and does something he’d never do around anyone else: he writes a letter by speaking it aloud.

He originally got the idea from Genji.

“My calligraphy was always good,” Genji chirped. “Zenyatta noticed it and suggested I try writing letters. I sent one to everyone. Everyone with an address,” he added, eyeing Jesse.

“Why not just e-mail?” said Jesse.

“C’mon, Jess,” Lúcio laughed. “Someone’s handwriting right there in your hands... the touch of the paper, the words they chose just for you… it’s sensual! Would’ve thought you of all people would get it, Mr. Leather Chaps.”

“He gets it,” Genji drawled, smiling at Lúcio. “He just likes to play the rough stoic cowboy.”

“Really?” Lúcio laughed. “You suck at it.”

Jesse smiles at the road. “Dear Lúcio. I’m missin’ you already, though we ain’t known each other long. You’ll be happy to know that my ‘rough n’ stoic’ heart craves a drink every time you cross my mind.”

He raises the volume of the radio when he recognizes a classic: Roger Miller and his biggest hit. Even Chéri had had this song in her library.

Jesse takes another, bigger swig; how can he remember her tracks so clearly when he only glanced it over for a couple minutes?

He remembers it the same way he remembers most things: as a picture. Colorful rows and columns. Album covers. Looking down over Hanzo’s exposed shoulder. That clean smell—the kind of clean that isn’t soapy or clinical but fresh and inviting; eucalyptus, or something like it. The softness of that dark blue kimono over that hard muscle. The gray hair on his temple swaying in an unaccounted-for breeze...

Jesse jerks his mind back to the letter like he’s pinching himself out of a dream. “I’ve picked up a couple contracts that’re gonna take me past New Orleans. Wish I could show it to you. Knowing you as far as I do, I think you’d love it.”

Like cartoon snow tumbling down a cartoon mountain, Jesse’s thoughts skip from New Orleans, to romantic destinations, to Paris, back to Hanzo, at which point he yanks his mind to—

Ana. He’d once thought of bringing Ana to New Orleans, too.

Smooth as the V-formation of birds in the corner of Jesse’s eye, her picture emerges. She looks just how he’d left her all those years ago: tired, yet stronger than ever. Sculpted and graceful and sharp-edged. A vision in black-and-blue no matter what age.

When Gabe sent Jesse out to look for her all those years ago, the gunslinger didn’t know what he’d do if and when he found her. But when he did, the answer came to him as crisp and clear as any answer ever had; no one could tell Captain Ana Amari where to go or what to do.

And that’s what he trusts: push comes to shove, Jesse’s never needed a rigid plan or a clear path to an assured victory. His instincts are good. It might be the only good thing he knows for sure.

You are too spray-and-pray, cowboy, Ana once teased him. Sometimes you need a plan. How else will you find your path again when life knocks you off of it?

“Dear Ana. I hope you’re well.” He swallows dry, takes another swig. “I know you told me once to pick a path and stick to it, but I ain’t never been good at that. The best plan I ever had went to shit, and then… it led me places I’d never have gone otherwise. It led me to you. That weren’t my wisdom.

“Startin’ a gang seemed like the best idea at the time. Shit, a cardboard box looks great if you were raised in one built for shoes. I ain’t got your kinda far-seein’ eye, Ana. If I don’t know, I don’t know. Y’know?”

It takes him so long to get the words out that he’s lit a cigar and smoked a great deal of it before he’s reaching for the closing lines. Thank Christ Ana isn’t around to see him talk to himself. Or maybe she’d understand; she’s certainly spent a lot of time alone. And she certainly cherishes the memories of her loved ones enough to talk to them when they’re not there.

“If you see Fareeha, send her my love.”

Gabe would definitely make fun of him. Talk about a far-seeing eye: Gabe could see the big picture while never losing track of the details. Or maybe he just thought he saw the big picture because he was always staring at the minutiae, like those scientists that looked at the cosmos for too long and went nuts. He certainly lost some kind of vision, over the years.

“Dear Gabe,” Jesse sighs, chews on his tongue. “I got too much to say to you to fit it all into one letter, old man. So, uhh… fuck you... and... I miss you. All my love, Jesse.”

He snickers to himself, imagining the stupid postcard he’d put it on; some Texan monstrosity foul enough to make Gabe huff and mutter one of his many patronizing nicknames. He always seemed a little annoyed by his own affection for Jesse and all Jesse represented.

Not unlike Hanzo, actually.

Jesse smokes that cigar down to a stub before he speaks again.

“Dear Hanzo.”

He squints at the horizon. The highway turns into an endless gray line, merging with the blue sky into an endless path, hypnotizing Jesse so bad that he misses his exit. He goes to take another swig only to be met by an empty bottle.

That’s alright; he can keep his mind occupied by listening to the news. He’ll have to do a lot of research and save up a lot of green before he can make a move against Talon. Miles and miles to go.

5.

The siege in Rio was firecrackers in a tin can compared to the slow business that is the tracking and seizure of lawless men. It seems like no matter how many times Jesse asks for a midday shoot-out, life responds with a backroom brawl followed by months of dry recon. When he’s not caught up in a rare burst of violence, his days turn into a dull montage of the same three objects: his laptop, some faceless public place like a coffee shop or hotel lobby, and a rented room.

But the road still has its charms. Flushing a particularly entrenched bounty out of Seattle puts Jesse at the foot of the lovely Cascades on a cool, sunny spring morning. After the arrest, he rents a gray appaloosa for the price of ten trail-rides and spends the next couple of days beneath starry skies and stately conifers. The mountain has its own kind of clarity and he tries his best to breathe in deep; another thing he learned from Genji.

As he’s walking the mare through the dappled forest, he can’t help but think how well Hanzo would be suited to a trip like this. How they’d ride side-by-side, talking honestly and easily. The man really opened up towards the end; at least enough to make good conversation. Teasing and challenging Jesse like Gabe used to do, but with an underline of respect. Even affection, towards the end.

Jesse’s had enough time to think about Hanzo six ways from Sunday, but nothing seems to budge. He’s tried dismissing it outright (“You hardly even knew him. It’s all in your head.”) He’s tried arguing it down (“If you’d just fallen into bed, all this would’ve been outta your system by now. You thought he was a dick and you were right.”) He’s even tried his old stand-by: self-flagellation (“You got a real bad habit of falling for people who’re way outta your league or just plain impossible to be with. It’s how you make sure you wind up alone. This is Ana all over again.”)

But no matter what Jesse does with his head, Hanzo refuses to fall out. It’s been like this since Texas and the gunslinger is just about ready to throw down his gun. Any attempt at extricating Hanzo only makes him dig in deeper, as if the stubborn man himself were set on holding his ground.

That, Jesse’s brain provides, And you love him.

Might love him, Jesse corrects. It’s not like I’d really know either way.

He’d thought he was in love with Ana, but that was a lot of youthful pie-in-the-sky; the time he’d spent with her was always strictly mentor/mentee, or lieutenant/commander, or just two soldiers shooting the shit. He never knew her in any other sense, no matter what flowery landscape his lonesome mind conjured.

Maybe that’s why he got so caught up in Paris. Romance is easy as far as his imagination’s concerned, but any experience he’s had with the real thing could fit on the head of a pin. Maybe that’s the only reason he gets so romantic in the first place.

Again Jesse thinks of writing Hanzo a letter, but again he finds it impossible to think of the right words, even though his horse would be the only one to hear them. So he he just hums Sam Cooke and pays the ache no mind. Time and distance will strip him of the pain like they always do. The road will wear him smooth.

6.

With summer comes acceleration. Either Jesse’s gotten more wiley in his advancing years or the criminals are getting dumber, because the cash has never flowed so easy. His wits and his gun take him all around the world: Jamaica, Madeira, Laos. He feels relief every time Peacekeeper weighs in his hand, every time that heat burns through his glove. He gets swept up by the whirlwind of righteous, risky work, until the Hanzo ache becomes more like a sore joint than an open wound. He doesn’t even look at the photo he took of Hanzo sitting on Chéri’s stage anymore; the one where he was looking at Jesse with something like a smile.

Then the summer gets too hot and Jesse gets too rash. He gets caught in a small room with too many men with too many bullets and winds up taking one in the arm just above the prosthetic. A bloodied, twenty-mile hike from a gang compound in the middle of nowhere just to escape with his life. The bone is cheaper to fix than the tech would’ve been but the lag time is ungodly.

Gives him no excuse not to check back in with the team at least. After a short and light-hearted group call, Genji calls Jesse back on his own. That strikes Jesse as strange until:

“I got a message from Hanzo.”

Jesse’s very proud of how nonchalant he can sound when he’s of a mind. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. He is in North America. Back to his old job.”

“Huh.”

"He asked about you.”

“Did he now.”

“I told him we hadn’t heard from you, but that you’d returned to bounty hunting. He asked if you were stationed anywhere specific.”

“Mm-hm.”

“I said I didn’t know, but that you were probably in North America.”

“That right.”

“Jesse, stop acting like you don’t care.”

“I don’t,” Jesse growls. “Why should I?”

Genji sighs. Once again, Jesse is reminded that he’s stopped breathing.

“You know that both of you deserve to be happy, right?”

Now Jesse snaps, “Jesus, y’sound like a goddamn fool sometimes, Genj. ‘Deserve’ don’t mean shit. Did Rio deserve to get hit? Did you deserve any of the shit that happened to you? Did Gabe, or Jack? Did any of us? I don’t ever wanna hear the word ‘deserve’ again.”

Genji is quiet again, but only for a moment. “Would you call Lúcio a fool, then?”

“What?”

“Lúcio. Is he a fool for hoping for a better world?”

“'Course not.”

“Then why do you think there is no hope for you?”

Whatever Genji’s trying to say, it beats uselessly against the gates of Jesse’s indigence. They hang up with jokes, civility restored, but the gunslinger’s bad mood lingers; what is Hanzo getting at, asking about him? What does he care? If he wanted to check up on Jesse, why wouldn’t he leave a number? Or try to contact him directly?

That night is the sixth stuck in the rattiest of motel rooms, which is enough to convince the now-constantly-agitated Jesse to stop staring at the popcorn ceiling and find the local bar. He winds up chatting with a nice couple: mid-30’s, ranchers born-and-bred. Both chattier than him and generous with their round-buying. Teasing him while The Flamingos croon from a jukebox he can’t see. Jesse’s a little surprised when he realizes where it’s all headed, then actively pushes it along; when Mike rests his hand on Jesse’s thigh, Jesse slides his good arm along the back of Mary’s chair. When they wind up in bed, he tries to stay as giving as they are, but gets bullied into laying back and taking it. Don’t have to tell me twice, he murmurs, even as his Budweiser-soft brain conflates Mike’s hands, Mary’s strap, and all their sweet nothings for the sweet nothings Jesse never got from Hanzo.

Stop it, growls his mind. Stop letting this man who doesn’t give a fuck about you screw up every decent moment.

But phantom tastes mock him until he has to bite down on his own tongue to keep from crying out the wrong name.

After leaving in the dark with quiet good-byes, he’s still jumpy. When he’d get like this as a younger man, he’d go out looking for a fight. A part of him still wants to.

So he takes off for another town. Then he passes it. He keeps going, then keeps going some more. He drives until time loses meaning, only stopping when he realizes that he’s close to Yellowstone, way out in the woods where it’s still illegal to shoot wolves and you can hear them howling for each other under the heavy moon.

Still tipsy and manic, he doesn’t nod off until he finally lets his mind do what it’s been wanting to do for months now and write that letter to Hanzo. He lets it run like a leaky semi until the thoughts trip over themselves, stumbling and rambling like the local drunk, growing angrier and angrier until it excavates older, seemingly-unrelated angers, like a series of overflowing pools, spilling until it trickles to an unsatisfactory end in the middle of an unfinished statement and the only evidence is a wet spot on his serape just under his heavy skull.

7.

Mid-summer finds him on Borneo, rushing from Malaysia to the southernmost tip of Indonesia. He hums Gillian Welch as he drives a fishing boat after another boat, dodging salty spray and machine-gun fire. He follows an omnic eight hours from Edinburgh to Birmingham, “borrowing” and destroying three vehicles in the process. He writes an apology-check in Miami after a bounty chases him through an art museum—the beachside bartender points out the blast debris still stuck to his hat when he orders a margarita four hours later.

Sometimes he sees evidence of Hanzo. Contracts taken up before Jesse can snatch them and finished with the kind of dramatic flair that echoes through the killer-for-hire world. It’s not as separate from the bounty hunting world as some would like to think, so Jesse has more than enough opportunity to absorb the gossip.

"Someone took out Keobunta in his own home? Heard the guy was found by his butler five days later. They thought he was just working until they noticed the smell.”

“Vitkus got hit. Did you know she was heading up that trafficking ring in the Caymans? They got her on her own private island.”

“Did you hear about Winthrop? Archie Winthrop, that prison magnate up north? He got killed on his way to work while he was in his damn own helicopter. They didn’t even realize he was dead until they landed.”

“I heard he was poisoned beforehand. Simple.”

“Nope. I saw the file. Puncture wound. They said it was an arrow.”

It’s like that from coast to coast; rare sightings, most of it exaggerated for the ego-boost of the teller, but all unmistakeable. Hanzo is out there and he’s going after the biggest and baddest of fish. Jesse tries to put it out of his mind, but finds himself whispering to a presence he hasn’t spoken to since childhood, asking that at least someone watch the man’s fool back.

Then autumn begins and he gets sloppy again, this time in Pigeon Forge, right beside the path the omnics cut from the omnium in Nashville to Shaw Air Force base. Whole parts of the Smoky mountains are missing, though Jesse never knew those peaks before they were destroyed. Just when he’s thinking of swinging by Dollywood, bounty hunters blow out his tires, shit gets ugly fast and he winds up getting chased by sirens all the way past Knoxville.

He manages to lose the cops and hide in an empty apartment in a not-yet-opened complex where the water doesn’t even run, but it serves for the fourteen hours he needs to make sure he’s not going to die before he hits the road again, this time all the way to the southern border. He was getting tired of America anyway.

Now he has to hide out for real, holed up in a desert cabin with enough supplies to last him for weeks. He makes it only one before he’s leaning his sunburned forehead against the cool shower tile and humming Hanzo’s name while he strokes his cock, slow as he can stand, gripping and re-gripping his balls, a little rough like he thinks Hanzo might be. Would’ve been. Woulda coulda shoulda.

He imagines Hanzo grabbing his hair and giving him a shake. Don’t you dare focus on something other than me.

“Like I could,” Jesse drones, water falling over his slack lips. “Darlin’. Baby...”

He bucks into his hand, imagining it’s Hanzo he’s got pressed to the shower wall, grunting with that scratchy voice and reaching back for Jesse’s hip just to hold on, or maybe to make him drive deeper, faster.

Way in the back of his mind, Jesse wonders if maybe all that ties him so violently to Hanzo is nothing good. Maybe it’s their matching red letters. Maybe it’s their irascibility, their differing yet mutual unpleasantness. Maybe it’s the simple fact that Hanzo left him first, and deep down, that’s all that Jesse thinks he deserves.

Jesse whines loud enough to echo off the tile and imagines it’s Hanzo’s whine. He imagines peeling apart Hanzo’s round ass to watch himself push in and out, hard and steady and deep. He lets his fantasy run wild and imagines fucking him until Hanzo groans that it’s too much, that he can feel it in his belly, that he’s going to come if Jesse doesn’t slow down. That he never wants Jesse to slow down.

After he’s come, Jesse lets it all rinse away and only gets himself to sleep by humming the same song he’d sung for Hanzo back in that old Paris kitchen.

The weather turns colder before he uncovers his first true Talon operation. In Mexico City, he corners one of their lieutenants in the middle of her boardroom presentation and takes her in within the hour out of sheer necessity. Now the target on his back has reached galactic proportions and there’s nothing he can do but keep moving even faster, running straight through autumn like his spurs are on fire. He finds more threads, but they all split into so many more; schemes upon schemes, misdirections upon misdirections. What can one man do?

The phrase follows him with as much unimpeded regularity as the rolling sun: what can any of us do?

The second letter he writes to Hanzo is much shorter, but also never gets down on paper. 

Then it’s winter and he’s in Budapest. News of Overwatch’s appearance in Siberia makes him feel more numb than he’d like. For the first time in a long time, the idea that they don’t need him and the idea that he ought to be there anyway feel equally matched. His birthday comes and goes and he only realizes it ten days too late.

It’s Christmas by the time he understands what Genji meant in that summertime phone call. He’s in Mexico again, where he always seems to wind up during the holidays, and he’s watching shots of Paris on the news while he chats with Angela on the phone.

“You’re back in Calaveras, aren’t you?”

“Now how’d you know the name of my go-to Christmas destination?”

“You told me, Jesse.”

“Doesn’t sound like somethin’ I’d confess to my primary.”

“If I were your primary,” and then Angela lets out a chortle that leaves Jesse with only his grim imaginings of that alternate reality. “Anyway. There’s a time for bad decisions.”

“Sounds like you got somethin’ yummy in your hand.”

“Leite de Onça. Lúcio made them for everyone! It looks like milk, but,” Angie pauses and Jesse can tell from experience that she’s hiding a hiccup, “It is not milk. And there is cinnamon.”

“Sounds mighty tasty.” The holovid distracts Jesse with shots of local Parisians helping to re-pave a road. “Y’all watchin’ the news?”

“Not today. Lena won’t let us. What’s happened?”

“Nothin’. Paris reconstruction. Seems like it’s goin’ well.”

“Ah.” Angela pauses, then speaks with a dose more sobriety. “Are you spending the day with anyone?”

“Why, Angie?” He grins, misdirects: “you wanna take the last flight to Dorado and finally make a man outta me?”

Angela snorts, but not quite enough to make Jesse feel insulted. “I changed teams late too late in life to go back now.”

Jesse nods, still distracted, then stills. “Wait. Does that mean you and Genj—”

“Guet guet, have a happy Christmas, Jesse, here’s Brigitte!”

Angela passes off the phone and one by one, Jesse gets Christmas wishes from the whole team. Then it’s just him and the images of Paris and the knowledge that, even in their perpetually battered world, with Talon lurking behind the scenes, people help one another, even if it seems like too small a thing to matter.

He watches until he can’t take it anymore, then orders another whole bottle on top of the glass he hasn’t yet finished and stumbles out into the merrymaking crowd. At some point, he winds up on the beach; boots off, jeans rolled up, wading into the ocean with his hat in one hand and the bottle in the other. He can hear a distant mariachi band playing Roy Orbison. The bottle is empty, but he can’t seem to let it go. He wishes he’d had the guts to get even one of those letters down; he’s never sent a letter in a bottle before.

If he’d tried, he could’ve sent it. If he’d sent it, Hanzo could’ve responded. There could’ve been a chance to something—anything. But it’s been too long by now. And hope is a springtime thing.

Then he thinks that it’s maybe time to stop all this. Hanzo wouldn’t find it appealing and, much more than that, Jesse can’t say he’s too proud of himself. The road may keep on going, but now he’s tired and he wants to get off.

He spends the rest of the night looking for something good to do. He only winds up helping some older lady to her daughter’s home, carrying maybe a dozen cooked dishes, but she gives him a few tamales that he takes back to his hotel and that, as it turns out, is enough to let him fall asleep without trying.

8.

Spring sneaks up on him. He’s on the level now; less drinking, more resting. He’s in Sapporo, which is the closest he’s come to Tokyo in many years, and he’s humming while he steps off the train and into a winter wonderland. Huge snow sculptures of all kinds make him tip his hat up and whistle low. It’s wild to think that, in a few weeks, all of it will have melted away.

When Hanzo crosses his mind nowadays, he does so like Gabe or Jack or even Ana: a soft presence at his side, not a burden on his back. Like the blanketed trees, it’s still alive, but subdued. A well-earned rest.

He’s done a lot since the rush of autumn. Talon is still wary of his interference and every operation is like walking into a pit full of cacti, but he no longer has to look over his shoulder every second of every moment. He no longer churns every night or spurns opportunities to do a good deed. He doesn’t feel so small and old and powerless anymore.

But as Jesse feels his spirit lighten with each passing day, he also finds himself getting crazy ideas. Like he opened a door to a room he didn’t even know was there and now a dozen excited people are pulling him in all kinds of directions. He knows the road can do this, knows he’ll always test his solitude with small explosions sooner or later, but this idea isn’t like trying to visit Ana in Egypt or popping back into Santa Fe.

He wants to go back to Paris. He wants to see if Talon has left trails. He wants to see how Chéri is doing, to see how the city is faring. And he wants to just see.

Something about it makes him feel like a kid, but it’s a damn sight better than feeling old. The two sides argue in his head:

Haven’t you learned? What was the goddamn point of all that time if you’re just gonna scratch it all open again?

This ain’t scratchin’. This is just movin’ on.

In the end, his gut agrees with the kid, so he finds a plane out of Sapporo that very night, flicking through his phone while fireworks go off all around. Maybe, once he’s seen it all again, he can finally let it go. He’s seen the ruins at Geneva, and that trip wasn’t planned neither. 


	3. troisième partie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jesse returns to Paris to lay it all to rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter! Thank you all for reading, and for leaving kudos/comments. I know fic writers aren't really supposed to say this, but seeing actual proof that you guys appreciate my work means so much to me. It makes me so happy to know that I've brightened someone's day in this shit age we live in, even if just for a little while.
> 
> Thanks again to robo-cryptid who beta'd this chapter!
> 
> Hope you enjoy the conclusion! <3

It's strange to look out the window of his hoverbus and see that the flowers are still in their buds. Jesse finishes off his breakfast, a packaged pastry, and sits befuddled until he's licked his last finger and realizes, of course—they’re still in February. He’ll never again imagine Paris as anything other than how it looked at the height of spring.

Construction sites dot the city but there’s a definite lack of tourists. The sky’s slate gray and there’s an air of purposeful quiet from the Seine to Avenue Henri Martin. It seems like an entirely different city. He keeps his head on a swivel all the way to his hotel: a tiny, under-the-radar three-story. He sits on the tiny balcony with his shirt off and his laptop open, ankles crossed on the iron railing as he dives into the information he's accumulated since summer's end. Talon's Parisian operations are mostly of the financial-exploitation variety; in other words, business as usual. That means that there’s an even greater chance than usual that he’ll wind up moving the decimal point on his bounty if he makes a move against them now.

But even if he succeeds with Talon (and he doesn't know what that would look like,) what will he take with him when he leaves? What if seeing the lounge only keeps the wound from healing? He knew that returning to Paris—going to the lounge exactly one year after his first meeting with Hanzo—wasn’t exactly a smart idea, but that it all might somehow make things worse hadn’t occurred to him. Until now, of course. Maybe this is why Ana used to be so insistent about planning. 

Other than the undying grief of lost loved ones, Jesse isn't used to lingering on past pains. Coming here was the only thing he could think of that could maybe let Hanzo rest in his heart. The exorcism might fail, but it's worth a try. If he told anyone—even the all-knowing ghosts of men and women who knew him better than his own mama—that he'd spent the last year pining for the same person, they wouldn't believe it.

Chéri will see him for the last time tonight. In the meantime, he needs to go shopping for something that doesn’t look like it just spent twelve months being shoved in and out of a duffel.

As the sun falls lower and lower in the sky, he finds himself thinking of stopping for an early drink before hitting up downtown. Pictures of daffodils in silly advertisements seem to pop up out of nowhere. A piece of a familiar song coming out of a shop assaults him with a ridiculous (and irritating) serendipity. Jesse finds himself wondering what Hanzo is doing now; whether he's still diving headfirst into his work, whether or not he ever takes time to relax.

He can't imagine the latter too well, but then Hanzo always was pretty good at finding small moments to center himself. He seemed to integrate it into the day no matter what needed to be done. He enjoyed his food and drink; he’d eat twice as much as Jesse and only stop there because he was too polite to ask for more. He’d sit and drink his tea as though it were an event in and of itself. Sometimes his eyes would drift during his bow maintenance, lulled by the repetitive act. Even more than Jesse, he enjoyed old things and nature's doings, and always pointed them out once he learned that Jesse appreciated them, too.

He taught Jesse so many things that are hard to put into words. What's easy to say is that Hanzo made him feel like he was fine just the way he was: haggard, broken. So rough-around-the-edges he thought he'd die never finding anyone who could stand to touch him more than once. 

As Jesse struggles to find shirts that fit well and pants that don’t make him feel like he’s headed to either a funeral or a job interview, he imagines what Hanzo would be like on a shopping trip. How he’d probably poke fun at Jesse, act the cynical snob, but compliment him so deeply when he finds the right piece. Hanzo’s endorsement still makes Jesse blush; thinking about those sleek dark eyes pointed like weapons. A kind of sincerity Jesse never saw before.

That’s another thing he got from Hanzo: honesty. Even if it hurt, the man had an integrity that made Jesse’s heart swell. Maybe that’s why his sudden departure felt so disturbing; it made Jesse wonder if Hanzo had been lying somewhere along the way. Because up until then, everything had felt so good. More than good—it'd felt right. 

It’s not until twilight that Jesse finds himself watching a pair of omnic street musicians and admitting, finally, before God and his own heart and whotever else might be listening: he really does love Hanzo. Maybe someday he can turn that into a ‘did,’ but for now, he’ll let himself sit with it. Maybe they’re not the kind of men that can save the world, or _should_ save the world. Maybe they couldn’t have even saved each other.

But they could’ve been so good together. Better than anyone Jesse's ever met.

He walks away a little fast; truth be told, he's getting tired of accordions.

Chéri’s cafe is lit up from within. The front cafe is delightfully busy, though touched with what Jesse would describe as the grim determination to have fun; a population that has all-too-recently been reminded that they could go at any time.

He politely makes his way to the back until the crowd parts to reveal the out-of-place armoire and an obviously on-duty omnic standing beside.

Jesse’s heart leaps to his throat so fast that he internally rolls his eyes at himself. _Calm down. You’ll have a few drinks, check out Chéri’s show, then skedaddle. Maybe have a few more drinks someplace else._

“Bon swah, mon-ah-mee."

The omnic scans the gunslinger from his boots to his hat, which Jesse takes off at once. He smooths down his plain white dress shirt and wonders if he should’ve sprung for a tie. He didn’t remember to buy a nice coat, so he’s wearing the old brown leather jacket he dons whenever the serape stands too great a chance at getting him noticed. It makes him feel like the old biker he always worried he’d grow up to be, but he straightens his back, owning it.

 _“Bonsoir,”_ says the omnic, in a voice twice as low as Jesse’s. “Do you have a reservation?”

“Er, no. No, I don’t. Was just hoping to pop in for a quick drink at the bar, if that’s alright.”

“Standing room is limited. You will have to wait until someone leaves.”

Jesse sighs, but he saw just one open bar-stool on his way in; if he's fast, he could snag it now. “Yessir. I’ll be right over there.”

He has to stop himself from shooting his first drink, but lingers long over the second. Longer than he’d like, in fact. The omnic and the armoire don’t move for a good half hour and Jesse gets to wondering if there’s some sort of code or trick he needs to get past that thing. Then again, it is Valentine’s Day; he’s lucky to be sitting down at all.

Then a couple gets through with just a few words exchanged. _Figures._ Jesse gets up.

“‘Scuse me, partner. There a password I don’t know about?”

The omnic somehow manages to convey artful condescension even with his unmoving metal face. _“Pardon, monsieur,_ but I am not permitted to give out such information.”

“That’s a long way of sayin’ ‘yes,’ partner,” Jesse mutters. Regrouping, he smiles his most charming smile and leans heavy on the drawl. “Now, mis-syur. I’m sure I could figure it out with just a couple’a decent hints. What’d’ya say?”

If anything, it makes the omnic even less receptive. “There are no hints, _monsieur.”_

“Oh, I’m sure you could come up with a couple good ones off the top of your head.”

“I am not permitted to make the attempt, _monsieur.”_

“Not even for a ‘lil extra?” Jesse pats the front of his jacket, though his wallet’s actually in his jeans.

 _“S'il vous plaît, monsieur._ There are guests behind you.”

“All I need is one hint, mon-ah-mee _._ Then I’ll be outta your hair.”

The omnic leans in, but someone from behind Jesse speaks first. “How do you say, _chéri?”_

The gunslinger whirls around and does a double-take so hard it hurts. Hanzo is standing there. All dressed in black. Staring straight through his soul. 

For a long moment, Jesse doesn’t believe his own eyes. He isn’t partial to exaggerated or cliche terms (or he would say that he isn’t), but for a moment, Jesse truly forgets where he is.

Then the part of him that’s always on auto-pilot whispers, “Darlin’.”

Hanzo, eyes narrowed to slits, pushes past him. “That is the password.”

Jesse stares as the omnic pushes open the armoire and Hanzo walks into the artificial-candle-lit tunnel. He stares until the reflection off Hanzo’s golden sash nearly disappears. Then he remembers the last time he saw it, when it was whipping away from him up the midnight streets.

Jesse strides in after him. 

_“Monsieur!”_

“Mercy-boo-coo, friend,” he waves.

True to form, Hanzo moves fast; he’s already through the door by the time Jesse catches up. 

But the sight of the lounge puts another shock through Jesse’s body. New strings of antique lights run up and down the ceiling, casting warm shadows all over the still-dim lounge. All the little round tables are full of smiling couples caught up in the low murmur of dinner conversation. Something like beef slow-cooked in red wine permeates the air along with the more subtle, sweeter notes of liquor.

And, at the center of it all, Chéri. She’s been re-fitted with big earrings and metallic feathery appendages that make her look more like her inspiration, Josephine Baker. She’s belting out some ancient, playful French ditty as the crowd listens from their tables, the bar, or the dance floor—three or four couples cut it up on the parquet before her stage, lively as a devotional fire.

The crowd is also almost entirely couples, but Jesse doesn’t notice that as he strides up to Hanzo at the bar.

 _“Hanzo_.”

The man doesn’t even turn. “McCree.”

“What are you doin’ here?”

“Drinking.”

Jesse sweeps his eyes up and down; if he’d given half a shit about his evening attire, Hanzo’d given his all. That suit is tailored to the centimeter, and nearly as black and glossy as Hanzo’s hair, which is longer now and tied into a much more elegant knot than the choppy ponytail Jesse’d joked about last year. He’s also shaved the sides of his head and left his black silk shirt open just enough to see the tiniest sliver of the tattoo over his chest. It's enough to make the gunslinger feel hot and jumpy.

And stupid. “‘Drinking?’”

Now Hanzo turns just enough for Jesse to catch the glint of metal in the bridge of his nose, as well as his ears. “Did you forget English as well?”

Jesse has to physically shake his head to stop it from chanting _‘three piercings’_ over and over again. “C’mon. You… what’re you doin’ in Paris?”

“Work.” Before Jesse can follow up, Hanzo adds, “And I was curious whether or not Chéri was being put to use.”

Jesse scans Hanzo’s face but finds even less than he’d seen on the man’s worst days; he’s intentionally maintaining a mask of frowning irritation. He’s _angry._

Which makes Jesse angry, too, even on top of the lingering shock. After a whole year of no word, Hanzo returns to the bar— _their_ bar, is how his mind puts it—looking like that, and without a single kind word to say?

Caught between feeling wronged and wondering if he did the wrong-doing, Jesse stands immobilized. “I see,” is all he says after a too-long pause. Then he rests his elbow on the bar, pretending to be casual as if it will make his body follow suit. “I was curious myself. Looks like she’s doin’ just fine.”

Hanzo clenches and unclenches his jaw behind the taut skin of his cheeks. The anger in Jesse's chest stays at a low simmer, but Hanzo’s presence, strong and study at his side once again, leaves him skittish and achy and excited all at once. Even the smell of him is making Jesse feel like he’s fallen into some kind of waking dream.

He clears his throat. “How you been, then?”

Hanzo cuts him with his eyes. “Fine.”

“Just fine?” Jesse doesn’t get an answer. He clears his throat again. “Genji told me you were back in the saddle.” Seeing confusion wash over Hanzo’s face, Jesse amends, “Back in your old job, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Heard you were taking some tall orders.”

“Did you.”

Jesse's efforts at casualness fail. “Didn’t think to drop me a line while you were rakin’ it in, huh?”

Hanzo sighs. “You could have found a way to get into contact with me even if you didn’t already know my brother.”

“And from which part of that note was I ‘sposed to derive, ‘Gotta go, Jess, but I’d be amenable to you tracking down my number through my brother if you get a wild hair?’”

Hanzo’s drink arrives and he just holds it for a while, gripping the glass until Jesse is sure he’s melted some of the ice. Then he lifts it to his lips and drinks. 

The gunslinger breathes around a dual blockage of frustration and excitement. He looks from own boots to Hanzo’s fine leather wing-tips until his brain shouts at him: _you gotta do something fast, or he’s going to get away all over again._

“You wanna get a table?”

Hanzo looks at him through about a hundred layers of glacier-grade ice.

Jesse adds, “I think they only got small plates here, but. I’m buyin’.”

Hanzo remains ice-faced, so Jesse leans in and mutters low, “C’mon, Han. I won’t talk about nothin’ you don’t wanna talk about. I know that’s a fool’s errand,” He grins without meaning to—a short, sharp dart of his lips, still flooded with delight at being this close, “And you might just owe me one.”

Another few seconds hang. Hanzo seems to look Jesse over; composed as ever, but Jesse feels powerful emotions warring behind that careful facade. His instincts are good, and Hanzo is made for a man with good instincts.  
  
"Very well."

Jesse flags over a waiter, slips him more than he ought to and inquires about the same table they sat at a year ago, in the center-front. He puts his coat over his chair, lets Hanzo pick them out a bottle and angles himself towards the stage to give Hanzo space in voice and placement. Like he’s trying to show a wild horse that it’s in no danger. Hanzo mirrors him, and for awhile, they sit just like that.

Chéri sings three more songs, but not one from Jesse and Hanzo's list. Jesse doesn't know what he'll do if he hears one of them, but something about dancing seems like the answer to all their problems; something wordless and physical that isn't sex, based around their shared appreciation for a carefully chosen piece of music. But they're a long way away from dancing. Jesse toys with his napkin in the shadow of his lap and tries to put it out of his head, but can't keep from glancing over at Hanzo every eight seconds anyway.

Hanzo notices him looking enough times that he eventually sighs, faces the table, and takes a preparative drink from his wine glass. “Say what you have to say, Jesse.”

Jesse immediately stops stressing his napkin. “What? I ain’t got nothin’ to say.”

Maybe it’s just the warm light, but Hanzo’s cold front seems like it’s dissolved into something softer; something much more complicated. “Then what are we doing?”

“Just wanted to see how you were, is all.”

“I told you how I am.”

“You didn’t say shit,” Jesse snorts. He leans back in his chair and scratches his beard. “Jesus, fine. Do I gotta use a crowbar? How’s it goin’ with Genji?”

Hanzo looks about as suspicious as he did the first time Jesse met him and Jesse can’t deny how much it hurts. Just what did he do to piss Hanzo off this much? Has he been pissed the whole year? Is there no part of him that's even a little bit glad to see Jesse again?

“We speak every month or so. He keeps me abreast of Overwatch activities.”

“That’s it?”

“What more do you want?”

“Nothin’, Jesus.” Jesse swigs his own wine. It’s expensive enough to be a waste, but he’s never wanted to get drunk faster. “I mean, no, not nothin’. Wanna know how you’re dealing with shit.”

“There is no 'shit' to deal with.”

“Then why’re you actin’ like I spat in your drink?”

It was the wrong thing to say, and Jesse knows it even as he’s saying it, but at least Hanzo is glaring instead of turning to stone before his very eyes. “I am not acting any such way.”

“Fine. Y’know what, just remembered—I do have somethin’ to say. I think I deserve to know why you left the way you did.”

“So much for ‘nothing I don’t want to talk about,’” mutters Hanzo, sipping his wine.

Jesse flares. “You got no call to act like this. Not when you took off without a word right after... right after we was gettin' along. Was it somethin’ I did? Somethin’ I said?”

Hanzo seems like he’s grinding his teeth down to dust and it occurs to Jesse that the man actually has a lot to say, but Christ alive, he can’t even guess what that could be.

Then he looks at Hanzo’s darting eyes and sees something brittle. Like if he hardens any further, he’s going to crack beyond repair.

“I liked you,” Jesse mutters. Despite the heaviness of his years and all they entail, he feels about twelve years old. Like he’s chucking another crummy Valentine into another crush’s lap. It's awkward and embarrassing but it feels like the only possible next step. “Maybe I fucked it up somewhere. But I didn’t intend to.”

Hanzo seems to scan between Jesse’s eyes and a new sort of openness enters his features. He's surprised.

 _Asshole,_ Jesse thinks, but not about Hanzo; _you’ve been mooning over this guy for a_ year _and he hasn’t thought about you but twice. When are you gonna learn? When are you gonna goddamn—_

“You did not…” Hanzo begins, then stops. He sets down his wine glass. “You didn’t ‘fuck up.’”

Jesse remembers to breathe. “Then why’d you leave?”

Hanzo hesitates again, so Jesse goes on, “I know you got your own shit, Han. I know I’m a lot to deal with and… I wouldn’t be angry if you said that all you’d ever wanted from me was to waste a lil’ time. Maybe avoid Genji for a spell. But, shit, I didn’t think you were the kind to leave a man high and dry. Not without layin’ down the truth first.”

Now Hanzo is facing him fully. “It was you who was avoiding Genji.”

“What?”

“You were avoiding your patrols with Genji. You did not eat with your team, you slept as far away from them as possible. You wanted nothing to do with them.”

Jesse sputters, “Well… that ain’t totally wrong. I mean… I didn’t really believe I belonged there. Overwatch is… but, shit, Hanzo. That was just in the beginning!”

“You wanted a distraction,” Hanzo mutters, not looking at Jesse anymore. “You are nostalgic, you are romantic, and you are charming. You are accustomed to creating fantasies with which to amuse yourself. That is why you keep up this cowboy image. That is why you wanted all of my stories. That is why you made Chéri your escape. And I,” he lifts his glass, realizes it’s empty, then takes the bottle’s last drop. “I was a part of that, too. But I cannot live in a fantasy.”

Jesse’s speechless. He looks at Chéri as she writhes through a livelier number that ruthlessly contradicts the dark muck slithering through his guts. Because he knows Hanzo is right, but also that he’s so, so wrong, and he’s not sure he can explain why.

“I hate to tell you this, sugar, but I dress like this because I grew up dressin’ like this. Come to the southwest and you’ll see a lot of people still do. You lookin’ at me and seein’ a fantasy, well,” he tries out a wry grin, “That’s real flattering, but I’m the real deal.

“But I did wanna escape.” He fights to keep his eyes from looking at anything but Hanzo. “I wanted to help the old team, I truly did. But I just knew I didn’t belong there. Not anymore, anyway. Never even figured out why I went back in the first place. But I only figured that out after you left, because I don’t just… I'm accustomed to livin' on the road, and yeah, I've hung my hat wherever there was space to hang it, but...” Jesse finds a vein of truth and it flows effortlessly. “I only stayed in Paris because of you. _You_ made me feel like I belonged.”

Hanzo still looks stiff, but he _is_ listening—rapt, even. Chewing every word. 

“I’m sorry if I came off as too cavalier, but goddamn it, Hanzo. I ain’t accustomed to this shit. Probably just as bad as you.”

“After we were called back,” Hanzo says, no longer muttering, “You told me to go ahead. That we shouldn’t return to the hideout together.” 

“That was for _your_ sake, not mine! I know you were doin’ your best, but you know they all were watchin’ you for slip-ups. I didn’t want them thinking you were dodgin’ them to hang out with me. Guilty by association?”

Hanzo looks like a churning volcano, but he doesn’t look away when Jesse leans in and drops his voice, “I would’ve taken your hand, Hanzo. I just… I couldn’t read you.”

And that’s about all the vulnerability his heart can take. Jesse leans back, drops his gaze to his wine glass and breathes out in a long, harsh sigh. He can see why Hanzo thought what he’d thought—all the jokes, the easy flirtation, _“I have nothing better to do”_ —but to jump ship so fast, without even asking Jesse a question to clarify…

“It was easy,” Hanzo says. He’s frowning in Jesse’s direction, but Jesse feels like he’s frowning _through_ him, towards something unreachable beyond.

“What was easy?”

“You. Being with you,” Hanzo amends. “I’ve… I did not trust you. I thought you were playing a game, and also that… you had every right. We are not…” Now he looks not at the table, but again, through it. “I have never wanted short affairs. But I also…” Hanzo sighs, frustrated, and straightens in his chair. “I am not accustomed to any of this. I, too, didn't know why I was in Paris, with Overwatch. Being near Genji was the only step I could see. And even that was inadequate," Hanzo lifts his glass, speaks into it, "In the end.”

Jesse nods, but some pieces still feel out of place. “You thought I wasn’t bein’ serious? That’s why you left?”

Hanzo looks like he wants to escape, to be anywhere but where he is, but Jesse knows that if he really wanted to be gone, he would be. “And you seemed... ashamed.”

“Of you?” As Jesse shakes his head, he feels the bliss of looking at Hanzo rise up again, feels himself smile right at him. He goes through several options as to what to say next, but can only think of the rushing giddiness in his stomach, the feeling that he’s been given a great gift; a feeling dormant for a year now awakened, clear. “I gotta say, it’s… I’m usually accused of bein’ _too_ straight a shooter. But I guess you make me wanna think about what I say before I run my mouth. Maybe I should’ve run it more.”

Just as Hanzo opens his mouth to reply, the _sommelier_ appears; they finished their first bottle without noticing. Hanzo orders another. Jesse realizes they haven’t ordered any food, but he doesn’t feel hungry anymore. He realizes that Hanzo didn't bother asking Jesse what he really felt because he assumed that either Jesse was only interested in a fling or that, if Jesse did want something more, that Hanzo wouldn't have accepted it. Couldn't have accepted it. Because he thought himself unacceptable.

The silence lasts until the next bottle is opened, poured, and tasted. When they are alone once more, they both look at one another and Jesse sees another shift in Hanzo. The ice has melted into something muddled with shame, guilt, regret, but also pleasure. Joy, even—when Jesse feels his own slow-growing smile tug at the corners of his mouth, he can see Hanzo's own bud of joy grow, even if Hanzo isn't smiling back. Yet.  
  
“Sometimes it would seem that...” Hanzo stops, re-starts, starts over as though his own words fail to satisfy. “It often feels as if we do not speak the same language.”

Jesse grins. “I don’t know about that. We got along pretty well eventually.”

Hanzo looks down and sort of grins with one corner of his mouth and, to Jesse, it feels like a cool breeze. “We did.”

“Good thing we kept trying.”

Hanzo buries his growing smile with his wine and, when silence returns, it isn't intrusive. It settles at the table like an invited guest and Jesse is able to really taste his wine. It might be the finest he’s ever had, and he says so. 

When he looks at Hanzo again, Hanzo is already looking at him. Jesse opens his mouth, but before he can get there, Hanzo rasps, “Would you like to dance?”

Jesse's blood rushes even faster. “You sure we’re drunk enough yet?”

Hanzo locks eyes with Jesse, finishes off the rest of his glass and stands up. “Come.”

Jesse kills his glass and takes Hanzo's outstretched hand at the same time. Five or so other couples seem to part with serendipitous ease and Hanzo takes Jesse's waist, and his hand, and leads him in a modified version of the country waltz Jesse taught him so long ago. It's strange, but Jesse feels a strange, minor pang of jealousy for whoever Hanzo might've been practicing with.

Despite the full bottle they knocked down, Jesse doesn’t feel tipsy until five seconds into pressing close to Hanzo. It almost makes him dizzy until he focuses on the sensation of the floor beneath his feet, the solid man with the warm hand at his back. That familiar clean smell touched with something new, something spicy—cologne? Did Hanzo ever wear cologne before?

“Y'really messed with my head, Han,” Jesse mutters as they shuffle to and fro. 

Hanzo glances up from under those thick, dark lashes. Then he glances away, to the floor, and Jesse latently realizes that he's sort of bowing. “I am sorry.”

Jesse looks away, sniffs. “M’sorry, too.”

“You made no error.”

“Circumstances bein’ what they are, I would say otherwise.”

“I made the wrong assumptions,” Hanzo argues, barely a whisper. “I acted dishonorably. You judge yourself too harshly.”

“Hard not to.”

“You were a gentleman.” Hanzo sweeps his hand from Jesse’s palm to his shoulder, leaving Jesse to put his free hand onto Hanzo’s waist. “In the ways that mattered, anyway," he adds, a little wryly.

“And when was I _not_ a gentleman?”

Hanzo leans away from Jesse just to smirk at him. “You cheated at cards.”

“Honey, you can’t still be sore about that.”

“So you admit it _.”_

“Some might call that an integral part of the game. Plus,” Jesse smirks back, re-taking Hanzo’s hand in his hand and pressing it to his chest, “You and I both know the only reason you kept playin’ is ‘cause you wanted to figure out _how_ I was cheatin’.”

Hanzo laughs, low and soft and gritty, and it makes Jesse's heart literally skip and his head echo, _You are so terribly fucked._

But then Hanzo speaks lower, stilted—as if he’s forcing himself. “I still do not know if I trust you.”

“Prob’ly wise.”

“It was only one month.”

“Yeah.”

“We barely know each other.”

“Sure.”

“Then why?”

“Why what?”

Hanzo almost stops Jesse with the sincerity in his gaze, his words: “why are you here?”

Jesse wants to sound surer than he did last year. He wants to have answers, to make Hanzo feel safe enough to at least see where things go, but he also knows that it’s not entirely up to him.

In the end, all he can say is: “I’d like to try.”

Hanzo looks confused. “Try what?”

“I don’t know. Just try.” 

Then Hanzo’s expression drifts somewhere beyond confusion and Jesse elects to hold him close and take the lead for awhile.

Hanzo mutters, “I do not know what to—”

“Let’s just...” Jesse cuts in, presses his temple just above Hanzo’s temple, “Let’s just try this for right now. We can do this part.” 

And they dance. Chéri keeps her songs slow for a good while, allowing the warm mist of the swaying couples to drift a while longer and Jesse wonders if this is what life would’ve been like if he’d finished school, dated someone nice, settled down and only ever fired bullets at the coyotes trying to get at his chickens. Sometimes that life sounds nice, but now, if only for right now, he’s grateful for everything that led him to this nine-by-twelve patch of parquet. To a man who learned how Jesse likes to dance.

When the tempo changes and they part just enough to look at each other, Jesse is no longer wrestling over what move to make next. “Wanna go somewhere?”

Hanzo raises a brow. “Where?”

“Somewhere with me.”

One paid bill and a second bottle half-emptied, Hanzo and Jesse are not-quite-staggering through Montparnasse. They talk and do not talk in phases, take natural turns without ever mentioning a destination. They laugh too loud for men of their notoriety, but Jesse is too far gone to give Talon a second thought; at least Hanzo is probably hyper-vigilant enough for the both of them. And Jesse'd shake the hand of anyone bold enough to attack the pair of them, even in an ambush.

Time compresses such that Jesse is surprised to see the Latin Quarter all around, as if both of them were mutually drawn towards the oldest part of the city. The relative tightness of the streets makes them walk closer together, and Jesse thinks of taking Hanzo’s hand, but he also doesn’t want to lay it on too thick. There’s still a lot of unknowns flapping in the air between them.

But it’s nice. More than nice—it makes Jesse realize another reason he’s been hung up on Hanzo for as long as he has. Journeying is one of his soul’s deepest pleasures, but it’s nothing compared to the joy of traveling alongside just the right person.

Jesse smokes deeply from a cigar to calm his nerves, but also shares it with Hanzo. “Was twenty-six last time I was sent here.”

Hanzo lets out one of his patented grunts of acknowledgment. He’s looking far less tipsy than he did an hour ago, but the good mood has endured. “I looked up pictures of you in Blackwatch.”

Jesse nearly gives himself whiplash. “You what?”

“I was verifying the facts of one of your more ludicrous stories,” Hanzo waves his hand. “I only came across the photos by accident.”

“Oh yeah? Which ones?”

Hanzo scratches the side of his shaved head, not looking at Jesse. “The ones where you were on the cruiser bound for Shanghai.”

“Oh, yeah… Jack and them had a photo op. We all got caught up in it.” Jesse knocks his elbow against Hanzo’s. “And?”

“And what?”

“What’d you think of Lieutenant J. McCree?”

Hanzo shrugs as he takes back the cigar, mutters, “Did you ever take a photo in which you did not tip your hat?”

“Ha! Not if I could help it. But can you blame me? I was in my prime,” he sighs.

Jesse catches Hanzo looking at him from the corner of his eye, then turns to look back and nearly gets a face-full of smoke through which he can just barely perceive something that nearly makes him stop: Hanzo’s eyes running up and down his body.

“I think you are in your prime now.”

Jesse scoffs, but it comes out small and quiet. A large part of him wants to think that Hanzo’s teasing, but a small, strong part wants to believe him outright.

That smaller part grows when he sees that Hanzo doesn’t take those heavy-lidded eyes off him. Not until he’s met Jesse’s gaze, let out an amused, growling hum, like he _wants_ Jesse to see him staring. Then he smirks his lips around the cigar and turns away.

Jesse starts to feel too hot in his shirt. He swears under his breath. He reaches for the cigar when Hanzo hands it back and thrusts it into the corner of his mouth like a safety blanket.

Figures that Hanzo has incredible hearing. “What about Jesus?”

“You just…” Jesse shakes his head, unable to keep from grinning. “Make me a lil' crazy sometimes."

A beat. “I apologize if I offended you.”

“Wh—offend me? No, you… not that kinda crazy.”

“Oh?”

Jesse is now swimming in heat; he hasn’t encountered Hanzo’s straight-forward flirting before. It was too understated to detect a year ago—until the kiss, that is—and now it’s making his clothes feel oppressive. He loosens shirt buttons until the hair just under his collarbone catches the breeze. Normally, he’d easily slide into mutual provocation; now he’s nervous about making the wrong move. 

But if he wasn’t straight-forward enough last time, there’s no way he’s making that mistake again. He clears his throat, but his voice still comes out raspy. “Been wantin’ to kiss you for the past half hour or so.”

Jesse doesn’t look at Hanzo and he can tell that Hanzo isn’t looking at him, either. “Is that so.”

 _“Mmhm.”_ He takes a hefty drag, speaks with the nearly-spent cigar jutting from his teeth. “Thought I’d say so, given our penchant for misreadin' one other.”

“I see.” Hanzo’s voice has dipped, taken on a quality that reminds Jesse of the back of his knees hitting a stage, of his needy arms encircling something warm and solid and equally insistent. Of something hard jutting against his stomach. “Is there anything else you would like me to know?”

“Well, now. Let’s see.” Jesse chuckles tight behind his bared teeth. “Think you just about stopped my heart when you came up behind me like that. Lookin’ as fine as ever in that suit.”

Hanzo is smiling, but does something with his face that seems to say, _Tell me something I don’t know._

“I missed you, in case that weren’t obvious.” Jesse starts to feel as though he’s getting naked in the middle of the street. “Wrote you about four or five letters in my head when I wasn’t busy cursin’ your immortal soul.”

Hanzo hesitates enough to be worrisome, but eventually: “I thought of you as well.”

Now Jesse looks his way. “Oh yeah?”

Hanzo’s got a flush to his cheeks and a tone in his voice that makes Jesse wonder how many lonely nights _he_ spent in the shower. “Of course I did.”

“Darlin’, I ain’t liable to take anything from you as a matter ‘of course’ for quite awhile.” Jesse puffs more smoke, then snickers low and knocks his elbow against Hanzo's arm, “Wanna elucidate any part of that?”

This time, Hanzo plucks the cigar right out of Jesse’s mouth, brushing his lips with his fingers way more than is necessary. “I believed that, if I thought of you for too long,” Hanzo stares miles away before finally he places the cigar between his teeth, “I would inevitably summon you.”

“Didn’t take you as the superstitious type.”

“I wield immortal dragons, cowboy.”

“True enough.”

“And it worked.” Hanzo glances at Jesse from his peripheral, smoke drifting high. “You’re here.”

Something different reaches out from Hanzo’s eyes to Jesse’s; something deeper than flirtation. Something that blooms in Jesse's gut and builds exponentially until he's slowing his gait and reaching for Hanzo’s elbow until he slows, too. It makes him guide Hanzo against the dark windows of an empty shop with just two steps, until Hanzo is looking up at him with the narrow-eyed readiness of a lifelong fighter, lips parted.

Just before he dips his head, Jesse realizes that Hanzo’s not breathing. So he pauses with their lips a centimeter apart and scans Hanzo’s eyes.

When Hanzo finally releases a wine-tinted sigh, the fraction of space around them seems to crackle, spidering through Jesse's entire body. Then Hanzo’s eyes fall to Jesse’s mouth and the gunslinger closes the gap.

The alley is so quiet that Jesse can hear every creak in his leather, every catch in his lungs. He can hear the shudder in Hanzo’s breath as they part, as well as the soft sound Hanzo makes when Jesse presses close again, swallowing him up in his arms until he’s sure he’s crushing Hanzo’s ribs. He can hear the drumming of his own heart as a year’s worth of longing collapses in an instant.

The next time they come up for air, they’re both wild-eyed and panting and Jesse is relieved to see that the fever, the insane _pressure_ of it all isn’t weighing on him alone. Hanzo’s clutching his shirt like he’s afraid Jesse is going to escape and Jesse can feel himself against Hanzo’s thigh, both of them burning from toe to tip.

“You smell the same,” Hanzo whispers against Jesse’s lips, hands running amok. 

“You, too,” Jesse whispers back. “But you… I didn’t think you could get any more good-lookin’, honey, but this hair. Those _studs.”_

Hanzo leans back against the window, proudly preening as Jesse’s hands roam up and down his flanks. “I should have known it’d be something you’d like.”

“Yeah, I’m a sucker for—”

Then Jesse’s roaming hands reach Hanzo’s pecs and both men freeze. Hanzo just looks at him, face creased into something roguish and delighted, eyes as black and glossy as marbles.

“Did you—?” Jesse’s wide eyes try to bore through the cloth for a few dumb seconds before his hands take it upon themselves to grope under Hanzo’s shirt and brush over the twin studs piercing both nipples.

“You fuckin’—” 

Hanzo licks his teeth, puts one hand over Jesse’s and presses until Jesse mindlessly curls his pointer and thumb around one barbell and twists it back and forth. The effect is immediate—Hanzo’s jaw loosens as he sucks in air, one of his nice shoes scuffing the cobblestone to salvage his balance. Grunting into Jesse's throat.

Then Jesse hits some kind of override, everything dissolving in favor of white-hot need. _“Hanzo,”_ he growls, swallowing the word. 

He kisses him again, scraping Hanzo's bottom lip through his teeth before dropping to his knees and wrenching open his fly.

The hands beside his head brush more than grab as Hanzo hisses, “Jesse, wait. Wai— _kssss,”_ then Hanzo chokes on a word Jesse’s heard from him many times before, the last syllable coming out in a long, strangled _“oh.”_

And that’s as far as he gets, because Jesse is spreading his tongue against his third biggest surprise of the night: Hanzo’s sixth piercing, a barbell jutting from the underside of his cock.  
  
The cigar butt lies still-smoking by Jesse’s shifting knees as he moans around Hanzo's thickness. He pushes his hair out of his face without removing Hanzo’s cock from between his lips, then looks up at the man to see him staring down, half-shocked yet still nodding his hips forward like he can’t help himself. Jesse lets his tongue slide up the piercing, circles Hanzo’s head, then grips him in one hand to tease with his tongue. A taste of the pre-cum Hanzo must’ve leaked while they were kissing hits his brain like a shot and he groans as he sucks Hanzo down to the root.

“Oh, God,” Hanzo grinds out. His hand dives for Jesse’s hair and Jesse hums; he nods his scalp further into Hanzo’s palm.

Then he slides away from Hanzo with an obscene _pop_. “Show me what you like,” Jesse rasps, jerking Hanzo with the tip of his cock brushing his bottom lip, staring up, a thousand degrees from his tight jeans to his hungry mouth. “Show me, baby.”

Hanzo gently takes Jesse’s hair and guides him back onto his cock. His motions seem to only be encouraging Jesse to do all the work, but Jesse is happy to oblige. He should’ve known that verbalizing his wants would be too much for Hanzo right now. It’s enough for Jesse to take over, to show Hanzo how much he loves having him in his mouth, surrounded by the smell and the heat of him. It’s not hard to summon enthusiasm for the way that barbell feels on his tongue, for the way Hanzo’s cock twitches every time Jesse plays with it. And play with it he does; he works his tongue so thoroughly around the ridge of Hanzo's cockhead that he has opportunity to learn about eight new Japanese swearwords.

Then Jesse imagines someone turning onto their alley and his own groin aches. How they’d see Hanzo pull his own shirt up under his chin, see Jesse on his knees. How they’d hear Jesse eagerly sucking Hanzo’s cock as he unbuckles his own belt to get a hand around his dick. Jesse wonders how Hanzo would react, whether he’d grow stiff and embarrassed or if he’d let them watch—maybe even leer, nodding his hips with Jesse’s hair in his fist. 

That thought alone makes Jesse bob his head faster, and Hanzo gasps above him. Looking up, Jesse can see Hanzo holding his breath, keeping himself quiet with what must be masterful self-control. He doesn’t blame the man; that he let Jesse do this at all is a surprise and a gift.

And it’s obliteratingly hot when Hanzo does have to breathe and lets out a low, boiling, dissonant groan that makes Jesse moan in turn, makes him shift on his knees just to take Hanzo further down his throat. Every time it happens, Jesse’s enthusiasm multiplies, encouraging Hanzo to let go as Jesse himself dissolves completely.

“Jesse,” Hanzo grits out through his teeth, clutches Jesse’s hair, and Jesse nods along with Hanzo’s rocking hips, swallowing around him, squeezing his sac and wringing him until Hanzo is twitching in his mouth. Hanzo swipes the corner of his mouth, mutters something low and soft and encouraging, presses his fingers over his tongue and Jesse sucks them as he empties his own cock over the cobblestone.

If Hanzo was pretty before, he’s a vision now: slumped and softened, disheveled and heavy-lidded. Jesse cleans him up good, licks his lips as he rises up.  
  
Then Hanzo is taking him by the arm and pulling him away. 

Jesse half-stumbles. “Where—?”

“My hotel is close.” Hanzo's grip on his arm is strong enough to bruise. “I am not finished with you yet.”

Hanzo’s hotel is, of course, much nicer than the one Jesse booked, but tiny in its age. The elevator barely accommodates their combined shoulders, but it doesn't burden them; Jesse pins Hanzo to the wall as soon as they enter, dragging him up so fiercely that Hanzo wraps his legs around Jesse's hips. The temptation to trigger the emergency stop is strong, but there's only three floors, and there's ample opportunity to press up against Hanzo's backside once they get to the room's door.  
  
“Cease,” Hanzo laughs, only just controlling his volume as he tries to fit his key into the antique lock. “Do you want to get in or not?”

“I dunno, this hallway’s nice, too,” Jesse drawls, sleepy but still-eager, reaching under Hanzo’s shirt to further tease his nipple piercings. “I ain’t picky, honey.”

“Shameless,” Hanzo hisses under his breath, though he sounds more goading than serious.

Once the door finally permits them, it’s a short stumble to the bed, where both men take their time in mutually ridding one another of their clothes. Dizziness follows their eager hands, their barely-subdued growls. Jesse has no time to get his head to stop swimming before Hanzo has him on his back, snapping open Jesse's belt buckle and working out his cock like he owns it. 

_“Han,”_ Jesse pants, trying to pry Hanzo up by his jaw. “Let me.”

“You’ve already,” Hanzo growls, only complying so he can swipe his thumb to clean up his chin.

“Wanna give you more,” slurs Jesse, grasping for him. “Don’t wanna wait.”

Hanzo complies, and Jesse peppers his chest with kisses, but there's a stiffness in Hanzo that makes Jesse look up.

“I am not leaving, Jesse.”

Jesse slows, then stops.

Hanzo cradles his skull with his spread fingers and bares his sincerity again. “Is this our last night?”

Jesse lets out a sigh he hadn’t known he’d been holding and buries his face into Hanzo’s throat. “I don’t want it to be.”

“Then let it go,” Hanzo tugs up Jesse’s chin, speaks with his lips brushing Jesse’s lips, “And fuck me.”

Jesse shudders from his groin to the tips of his fingers. Hanzo lays back on the sheets, sprawled and perfect, as Jesse presses himself down on him in rythmic waves, kissing open-mouthed as they mindlessly rut. Only the image of Hanzo's ass in the air gets Jesse off the bed and into his bag.  
  
But he rummages through it for only a second before he stops dead, realizing: “Uhh. I don’t got any stuff.”

He looks back at Hanzo, still sprawled, and sees what must be his own shattered expression reflected back to him. “I don’t, either.”

Jesse stares back, then lets out a weak, abbreviated laugh. “You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

Ruefully, slowly, Hanzo chuckles and shrugs. He's clearly still drunk as he reclines against the pillows with bent, spread knees, linking his fingers behind his head. “There is a 24-hour convenience store on the north corner.” Jesse stares dumbly until Hanzo nudges him with his foot. “Be quick about it.”

And that’s how Jesse winds up standing in a too-brightly-lit store with his buttons wrongly-buttoned, one tail of his shirt hanging out of his pants and an armful of condoms, a demure bottle of lube, and about a half-dozen snacks and Oranginas just so the true purpose of his visit isn’t offensively obvious. Which, of course, it still is. Especially to the three other people in line behind him.

“That cashier was jaded as hell,” Jesse chuckles as soon as he gets back, immediately spilling the bag onto the side-table so he can dig out the essentials. “Barely looked up from her crossword.”

But Hanzo doesn’t respond. He’s dead asleep, features as soft as an angel’s. And snoring.

Jesse sighs. He tosses the condoms and lube back onto the bag, then goes into the bathroom to force himself to drink at least two full glasses of water. When he catches his face in the mirror, he can’t help but grin, call himself a fool for grinning, then chastise himself for calling himself a fool. He doesn’t need to be wary of joy. He can let this one night be only good.

Gently, he moves into the plush white bed. He lets Hanzo have his space, but the man inches closer of his own accord, sighing deeply when Jesse holds his waist.

The morning comes soft. So soft that Jesse barely notices; he wakes at dawn, but indulges in a half-sleep haze, watching the drapes drift dim and golden for an unknowable amount of time, as if the sun rose in slow motion. Hanzo is sleeping with his face half-smashed into the pillow, the sheets making a maze over and around his body. Jesse looks at him for so long, he starts to let in something too grand for his heart to wrangle. Luckily, his brain lingers on the shelf of Hanzo’s ass, wonders if he could rest a bottle of wine on it, and that relieves him of any deeper musings.

Hanzo’s eyes open with drowsy slowness. He mutters something in Japanese (a greeting, Jesse thinks) and rolls onto his back.

Jesse slinks up to tuck his face into the crook of Hanzo’s neck. “They got breakfast at this place?”

“Somewhat,” Hanzo yawns. “Pastry and coffee only.”

“That’s a French breakfast alright,” Jesse groans. “Think you could rally for a nine-block walk? Know a place that makes a real nice ham-and-egg.”

“Give me time.”

“Hungover?”

_“Mm.”_

Jesse smiles against his throat. “You want me to bring you somethin’ again, dontcha?”

“I will never not want that.”

Jesse snickers. “Had to subject the entire lobby’s night-shift to my bouncin’ pecker ‘cause of you.”

Hanzo chokes on laughter, slapping a hand over the top half of his face. “Did you not put on _pants?”_

“I did, honey, but modern tailoring can only conceal so much.”

Hanzo laughs doubly hard, then winces, clutching his head. Jesse reaches as they lay facing one other, pets his thumb across the curve of Hanzo’s cheekbone.

They lay like that for awhile: Hanzo resting with closed eyes, Jesse stroking his face. The birds are insistent through the open window, the street below a softer din. Spring spinning onwards all around their golden room.

Just when Jesse feels he might drift off again, Hanzo speaks. “What will we do after breakfast?”

Jesse opens his eyes and sees that notch in Hanzo’s brow and he thinks about how this man is tormented from all sides: a bloody past and an uncertain future. Always writing plans on paper that’s dissolving under the forceful scratch of his pen. Wants to know what he’ll be doing next week, and five, ten years from now, but can't hardly see past the end of his own nose.

“Dunno,” says Jesse. “But I got a couple’a leads I wanted to check out.”

Hanzo finally opens his eyes. “Talon leads.”

“Figured you’d be aware, too, yeah.”

Hanzo hums.

“If you want, we could partner up for it. I ain’t sayin’ it’d definitely make things easier, but,” Jesse tosses words around in his head, trying to find his best options, “But I’d like to try it out, if you’d, uh, be... amenable.”

Hanzo smirks with half of his mouth. He scans Jesse’s face for a moment, then takes his jaw and leans in close.

“Wait, my brea—” Jesse is silenced by the kiss. 

When Hanzo lets him go, he’s smiling. “You never stop talking.”

“Gonna talk your ear off if that’s what it takes.” 

Hanzo keeps smiling, but Jesse can tell he’s thinking of what to say. Turning over ideas in his mind. So he lets him think, just brushing his hand over Hanzo’s chest like a sleepy metronome. 

When he speaks again, it’s barely above a whisper. “There is a French expression. _Reculer pour mieux sauter.”_ Hanzo brushes his fingers through Jesse’s hair. “It means to take a step back in order to jump better. Perhaps that is what we did without knowing.”

“A tactical retreat?” Jesse smirks. “That mean you wanna jump ahead?”

Hanzo chuckles. _“Juste une étape.”_

“What’s that mean?”

“I suppose you will just have to learn.” Hanzo sits up, now meeting Jesse’s eyes with pointed hunger as he climbs on top of him. “We’ll start with ‘I am.’ _Je suis. Répète après moi: je suis excité…”_

Two hours later, Hanzo and Jesse are in the street. Locals are out, as are the earliest flowers. The omnic musicians are in their same spot. Hanzo is holding an iced coffee in one hand and Jesse’s hand in the other. Jesse is remembering to breathe. Their back-and-forth continues from the hotel all down the Boulevard Saint-Germain and wherever else they plan—or don't plan—to go.

“Did you know that the French call it ‘window-licking?’”  
  
“That ain’t true!”  
  
“It is...”

_La fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and they lived happily ever after, irritating every Parisien within earshot. 
> 
> Merci beaucoup mes amis! I *may* do an epilogue for this one, wrapping up the Talon bits with a little smut thrown in, but I have other pressing projects at the moment, so it might be awhile.
> 
> Thank you for reading, leaving kudos, and commenting!!! <3


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